Woman faced arrest for pulling up a dead plant

Shop worker Angie Summers was threatened with arrest for theft and criminal damage by police – for pulling up a dead plant from a council flowerbed. A police officer called at her home after Devizes Town Council made a complaint that she had removed a dead plant from the border in the Chequers garden in St John’s Street. He later told her she could be arrested and put in the cells at the police station.

Mrs Summers, 43, of Cranesbill Road, Devizes, said she had been eating her lunch in the gardens last Monday. Mrs Summers said: “I work at Jack Spratt’s sandwich shop in High Street and often spend my breaks sitting in the Chequers. “I suppose I am a guerrilla gardener and quite often take off the dead heads from the flowers. I saw this dead plant and thought, that doesn’t look very nice. So I pulled it up. It didn’t need much pulling. I wrapped it in a plastic bag, put it in the boot of my car and disposed of it later.”

But her movements were seen by a trader who notified the police and the town council and two days later, shortly before 6pm, a police constable appeared on her doorstep. Mrs Summers said: “I couldn’t believe it. He told me someone had taken my registration number and reported me. I explained what had happened, apologised and he left apparently satisfied.”



But at 10pm that evening, the officer rang. Mrs Summers said: “He told me that the complainant wasn’t happy and wanted positive action taken. “The policeman told me what options I had. He could come and arrest me and put me in the cells or I could come in to the police station voluntarily.”

Inspector Andy Noble, the commander of the sector covering Devizes, said that no further action would be taken against Mrs Summers. He said: “The police did receive a complaint about a plant being removed but we have investigated the complaint and are satisfied that the person involved acted with good intentions. As far as we are concerned, that is the end of the matter.”

The council has since cleared the rest of the plants from the border at the gardens. Deputy town clerk Simon Fisher was unrepentant at the council’s stance. He said: “We don’t believe the plant was dead. We have lost a lot of plants this year, many of them we believe are ending up at car boot sales, and this is the first chance we’ve had to take any action. There is a principle here.”