Vandals destroy plants, smash pots at Paso Robles school: ‘They trashed our garden’
A school garden in Paso Robles was destroyed in an apparent act of vandalism over the weekend.
Daniel E. Lewis Middle School paraeducator Amanda Searcy, who is taking care of the garden on campus while students are away for summer break, discovered the vandalism Monday morning.
“They just trashed our garden,” she said.
Searcy said the vandal or vandals apparently jumped the fence into the garden and cut up several flowers, fruits and vegetables. She said several watermelons were cut at the stem and then “diced” up, while newly blooming tomato plants were “cut completely down.”
Broccoli, cucumber, sunflower, squash and several other plants in the garden were destroyed, she said.
Additionally, several pots decorated by students were smashed, Searcy said, and paint was splattered on plaques and around the garden.
“It was all very purposefully done it seems,” she said. “They didn’t steal anything. They didn’t ruin everything. They just destroyed things that really meant a lot.”
The Paso Robles Police Department is looking into the incident.
However, police Cmdr. Caleb Davis said “there are not many investigative leads.”
The garden reportedly did not have any security cameras in place.
Searcy said that she and others at the school felt overwhelmed by the “amazing community response” after she posted about the vandalism on her Facebook page.
Companies including Miner’s Ace Hardware and Outdoor Supply Hardware in Paso Robles have offered to help the school with any needed donations to replace broken and damaged materials, she said.
“We don’t expect anything to be purchased for us or anything,” Searcy said. “But, in our minds, it’s an opportunity for people to have conversations with their kids. Like, you don’t know what they’re out doing.”
The garden is a staple of the special education class that Searcy teaches as a paraeducator at the middle school.
She said the school implemented the garden as part of curriculum about two years ago to help teach life skills to the students — everything from how to raise a plant and grow food to the fundamentals of responsibility and hard work.
It’s a great teaching tool for the students, Searcy said, because of the hands-on nature of the garden.
Everything grown in the garden — the vegetables, fruits and flowers — were planted as seeds and carefully cultivated by the students with help from the teachers and school staff, she said.
“We’re able to get the kids outside and into the sunlight to grow these plants, it’s pretty awesome,” she said. “And we can teach a lot of things: science, history, math or pretty much any core content into this gardening curriculum.
“So it’s very important to us and we would love to continue doing it.”
This story was originally published June 21, 2021 at 5:27 PM.
