Handling vandals

Running a school garden in a tough neighborhood requires patience and compassion—and often yields surprising results.

By Katie Olender

Vandalism inspired by jealousy? Maybe. The author discovers the best "punishment" is sometimes a rewarding experience.

It started with a few tomatoes smashed on the driveway near the garden. Then, pumpkins were splattered throughout the parking lot. After that, the picnic table was spray-painted and a few weeks later, one of the benches on it was snapped in half. For months, plants continued to be ripped out or vegetables prematurely harvested and crushed on the sidewalk or left to whither in the sun. One weekend I visited the garden after midnight to cut mint for our garden party the following day and found the shed destroyed, with the walls laying on the ground and the tools spilled out.

That fall, less than a week after six classrooms helped cover the hoophouse frame with plastic, someone slashed it with knives and threw bricks through its walls. The following day, the students still planted seeds inside the tattered hoophouse as planned. We had intended to teach the students how the hoophouse would allow the seeds to grow throughout winter. Instead, we fielded questions from dismayed students who didn’t understand why the sides of their brand new hoophouse had been sliced, and from the police and reporters who recorded and photographed the damage. One first grader suggested that maybe the vandals were “jealous because we have vegetables and they don’t, or maybe they’re just bad.”

Though we have faced much vandalism, the community as a whole is supportive of the garden and hoophouse program. Neighbors chase away kids who seem suspicious and call me or the police when they discover more vandalism has occurred. Police officers drive past the garden more frequently now, and the city, school district, and our local water and light company installed a security light that shines on the hoophouse at night. Still, incidents do occur.

One August afternoon (in the midst of the vegetable-smashing episodes but pre-hoophouse slashing) my phone rang. I became instantly alert upon hearing the frantic voice on the other end of the line.

“It’s them, they’re out there!” said one of the neighbors whose home faces the garden. “They’re ripping out plants. I’m watching them from my kitchen window!”

I rushed to the school, and as I rounded the corner I saw four boys pulling out tomato plants and casually tossing them on the ground. The moment I pulled in the parking lot they panicked, and before I even opened my car door they jumped on their scooters and bicycles and rode away. I quickly surveyed the damage. Broken flower stems, tomato plants pulled out of the ground, baby pumpkins yanked off the vine. It didn’t look good, and I was furious.

I wasn’t quite sure what I intended to do, but, in what might be considered a heat-of-the-moment lapse in judgment, I was suddenly driving down the road in the direction they had ridden. “What’s wrong with you?” I shouted at them in my head. “This garden is not yours to destroy. Do you enjoy ruining things that your peers have worked so hard to create?” I wanted them arrested. I wanted their parents notified and for them to be grounded for the rest of their lives. I wanted them to get up in front of all 300 students at the school and apologize.

A few blocks from the garden, I spotted them sitting on the front porch stairs of a small, white house. I pulled in the driveway and rolled down my window. They all looked at me and froze. Even though I knew the answer I called out, “Were you guys just up at the garden?”

Wide-eyed and eyebrows raised they all vehemently shook their heads. I noticed that one had an untied shoelace and another had a brightly colored band-aid on his knee. It dawned on me that these vandals were just kids, maybe 9 or 10 years old. They didn’t look mean or threatening (if anything, they looked scared of me, the crazy lady who had hunted them down). They certainly didn’t belong in the dimly lit, damp jail cell I had created for them in my head on the drive over. They were so young. My anger subsided as I realized that the appropriate response to the vandalism was far more complicated than I had thought only moments ago. I changed techniques.

“Oh,” I replied. “I thought I just saw you up there and I was hoping you could help me. Someone has been ripping out the plants. Do you know anything about that?”

They all shook their heads but otherwise didn’t move a muscle. A moment later, one stood up and took a few steps forward “No, but…” he stammered. “But some of the older kids…they smoke up there a lot. We see ‘em.”

Undetered by vandals, students planted seeds in the damaged hoophouse as planned.

I thanked him for the information, and then said to all of them, “The kids who go to the school grow vegetables there. We need help protecting the garden for the kids, so it’d be cool if you could help watch it and ask people to stop wrecking the plants. People will listen to you more than they will listen to me.” They nodded rapidly, still goggle-eyed and all but the one still stationary.

I strained my neck further out the window and then added, “By the way, we could really use some help at the garden too. I’m up there a lot, and if you guys ever want to help weed or water or pick vegetables, you could take some food home. I think you would be really great helpers.” They nodded again and I drove away.

Three days later I was in the garden again, showing it off to two University professors who were considering encouraging their students to volunteer with the garden program the coming school year.

“Excuse me!” I heard from behind me. I turned my head and saw familiar scooters and bicycles lying next to the compost pile. Beside them were the kids from earlier that week. “Remember us?” the one who had spoken up before asked. “You said that if we helped we could take some things home.”

I showed the kids how to pull weeds out by the root, and helped them identify various vegetables. We looked at different insects and replaced some labels that had gone missing. One university professor explained her favorite eggplant meal, and the kids watched her demonstrate chopping and sautéing with an imaginary knife and saucepan.

I don’t know if their attitude changed after they were asked to help protect and weed the garden or if this incident was just a stroke of luck. All I know is that on that day, those kids rode home and seemed proud, their bike baskets and pockets overflowing with fresh eggplant, tomatoes and okra.

Katie Olender is the Food Systems Project Coordinator at the NorthWest Initiative, a community development non-profit organization. She is active in the local food movement, and is particularly focused on urban gardening as a means to food security for low-income communities.