ORCHID THEFT- Grandma's orchid collection stolen out of her own backyard! :(

[chloe13]

Hi all-

I don't know whether I'm more mad or sad right now! I can't even fathom who or why someone would do this.

As some of you may remember, I came to Orchid Board last year for help rehabilitating my grandmother's cymbidium collection which she'd been growing since before I was born. She was unable to care for them anymore and the last 25 or so plants left had been neglected for several years.

Well, over the last year or so I started tending to them each week and re-potted all of them and thanks to the help here, they came back to life!
Just last week, 11 of the orchids had flower spikes with 10+ buds each all just about to open up any day now.


I went over to check on them this morning, expecting to finally have some orchid flowers for my Grandma. Instead all I found were 2 knocked over pots that some of the younglings had been potted in, and outlines in the dirt where the rest of the large mature plants had been. Someone took them all, right out of the backyard!
These orchids were large standard cymbidiums in heavy pots so there's no chance the wind blew them away or anything, they were definitely stolen


This is all so baffling and upsetting, there's no way anyone would have even known the orchids were there because the yard is on top of a steep hill and can't be seen from the street or anything. Also one would have to go up a long windy driveway to even get up to the house, I'm guessing someone must have driven right up, loaded up their car and took off with them.


My apologies for ranting here, but no one else understands why anyone would care about some missing plants, but I knew you guys would. I also want to thank you all for the help and guidance that allowed those orchids to make a full recovery, even if someone else is now enjoying them instead of her!

Has this ever happened to any of you guys??