Vandals in garden rampage

Volunteers Pat Forrest and Gerry Corbett help pick up the vandalised plants at Drylaw Parish Church

The raised beds at Drylaw Parish Church were designed to offer easy access to users with special needs, who had started nurturing flowers and other greenery since the planters were created earlier this month.

But vandals pushed the beds over during the night, leaving plants strewn across the ground.

Craig Ellery, the day centre officer who runs the Drylaw Gardening Group at the church in Groathill Road North, said: "We've got a community garden at the back of the church and managed to get two raised beds which are quite suitable for our service users.

"They're just at the right level, so our guys can get right into them and can stretch across them easily.

"We filled them up with compost a couple of weeks ago and managed to get all the old plants that Homebase were flinging out for free.

"We've planted all of these but last Thursday I got a phone call from one of my colleagues saying that they had been tipped over during the night and the plants strewn all over the place. I was really disappointed."

Members of the group turned up on Monday for their weekly gardening session to find that their task for the day would be to scrape the remains of their plants off the ground.

Mr Ellery said: "We've managed to salvage as many of the plants as we can.

"They were disappointed, but we explained it to them and they're philosophical about everything, so we're going to keep going.

"The only saving grace is that they didn't damage the beds themselves, they just pushed them over. Whether they knew who we were doing this for, I don't know. Nobody's safe from this kind of behaviour."

Dobbies Garden World has now offered to donate plants to refill the beds. The firm's community champion for Edinburgh, Dawn Gibson, said: "I was sorry to hear about the incident at Drylaw Church - the visitors to the centre must be very disappointed.

"Through Dobbies, Here We Grow community programme, we have agreed to donated over 100 worth of spring plants, strawberry and other fruit plants, tools and equipment to help rebuild what has been destroyed.

"I am delighted to be able to donate products to Drylaw Church and will look forward to assisting them with various other projects they are working on."

The vandalism was also condemned by Forth ward Councillor Cammy Day, who said neighbours had offered to help restore the planters.

He said: "It's disappointing that a handful of vandals have done this to an excellent community garden project, particularly when it's one supporting adults with learning disabilities."Of course, I'm pleased that local community representatives and Dobbies have rallied round to help them remedy this and get it back in full bloom."