Counting thousands of dollars in losses after a series of major plant thefts at the Andromeda Botanical Gardens in the past week, the management of the six-acre St Joseph property is now forced to tighten security at the property.Sharon Cooke, owner of Passiflora Ltd, the operators of the tropical gardens, told Barbados TODAY she was saddened, shocked, disappointed and angry that plants of all varieties and sizes were stolen from the property owned by the Barbados National Trust.“I am hurt. If I talk about it too much I will just cry because this is just a real shock. I have been there eight years and this is the first time that this has ever happened. We have had people stealing hoses and equipment before, but now somebody has decided to go through and just take many plants.“They took donated plants. They took special plants. They took mature plants. They took pots and they ripped plants out of pots. This is really disappointing. We would never expect people to just go through the garden pulling out plants. This is thousands of dollars in losses when I look at the value of the plants that were stolen,” Cooke said.
