STUDIO CITY : Parents Step In to Replace Stolen Plants

It took only a day for the public to come to the aid of Carpenter Avenue School where Monday night vandals ransacked the garden that 100 volunteers spent the weekend planting in celebration of Earth Day.

“I felt so terrible,” said Alan Kaye, a Woodland Hills father of two, when he heard about the ravaged Earth Day garden.

“They worked so hard. So I called up the school (and offered) to replace the flowers.”

Kaye’s sons attend elementary schools in Woodland Hills, but the boys have done volunteer projects with Carpenter Avenue School, Kaye said.

Students, parents and teachers spent Earth Day weekend clearing the weeds around the rose bushes at the front of the Studio City elementary school to make way for a slew of primroses, gazanias and lavender flowers to be planted there.

But the school only had one day to enjoy the new flowers because Tuesday morning, the students found that 21 primrose plants had been dug up and stolen and that all the roses and rosebuds had been hacked off, said Nelle Hefner, project coordinator.

“The roses had all been cut down, pruned,” Hefner said.

“And this is the wrong time of the year for pruning.”

Hefner added that a second parent called Wednesday morning after hearing about the incident asking to donate flowers or cash.

Despite the kind gestures from parents, the youngsters and parents of Carpenter Avenue are still saddened, said Shelley LaFleur, vice president of Parents for Carpenter.

The school fund-raising group had spearheaded the campus beautification project.

“My kids ask me, ‘Why did somebody do that to us?’ ” LaFleur said.

Several parents have drafted a letter that will be sent to residents around the school informing them of the garden theft and vandalism and asking them to keep an eye on the school property to prevent any more such incidents, LaFleur.