Note cuts down Masterton vandals | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

A Masterton mother has put vandals on notice for beheading her front-yard sunflowers that were grown by her young children.

Karen Bracewell said vandals knocked the heads off the three sunflowers, which stood more than a metre tall, on Wednesday night.

Ms Bracewell and her children Isaac, 11, Cory, 5, and Kayla, 2, had been nurturing the plants at their home since November, she said.

She had yet to tell her eldest son of the incident but yesterday penned, and pinned to one of the plants, a letter to the culprits.

It read: "It is a sad day to think people are so disrespectful of others when they think it's clever to destroy someone else's hard work. Kids planted and took care of these flowers and you destroyed all their efforts."

Ms Bracewell hoped the vandals would read and respect the intent of the letter, which had been written out of disappointment and hurt.

"It's kind of ridiculous - they're only sunflowers - but I felt like someone had cut off all our hard work.

"They're such cool plants and it was our first venture into gardening together.

"We'd been watching them grow and caring for them every day and it's what the sunflowers meant to us after the hard year we went through last year.

"They were important to us."

Ms Bracewell said there were still five other sunflowers growing happily at the rear of the property and she was unlikely to replace the plants destroyed at the front of the house.

She said she and her children had also planted tomatoes and lettuces this summer as part of their first foray as gardeners together and that bounty had also remained untouched.

"I might plant agapanthus out the front next year, if anything at all," she said.