When you spend time nurturing a flowerbed full of plants from small seedlings to fully-grown foliage, the most rewarding part is seeing your flowers come out in full bloom and getting to enjoy a garden full of colour.
But one gardener has claimed she hasn’t been able to do that, because someone or something keeps pinching her flowers just before they bloom.
Heather Hoopes Seid shared a video on TikTok in which she claimed her flowers are being “stolen” from her garden. She said the flowers always disappear right before they’re due to open into full bloom, and it looks as though they have been “cut” at the stem.
The woman, from the US, initially believed the culprit must be one of her neighbours who has sneakily made their way into her garden and chopped her flowers to make a nice bouquet for themselves.
In her video, she said: “We have these really cool flowers in the front of our yard, but we can’t see them. You know why? Because somebody keeps cutting them before they bloom.”
She continued: “This whole plant was about to bloom, and somebody just cut off the tops.”
To dissuade the mystery flower thief from cutting the flowers that will bloom next, Heather put up a small sign. She also left a pencil next to the sign so that the culprit could let her know why they find the flowers so enticing.
She added: “[The sign] says, ‘Are you cutting these? May we ask why?'”
But commenters were quick to tell her that her sign is unlikely to be effective in getting any answers – because the real culprit is most likely deer, who cannot read or write.
Several people explained that Heather’s flowers are called daylilies, and deer love to munch on the flower buds before they bloom. This would explain why the flowers never reach full bloom and why the rest of the plant remains untouched.
One person said: “Those are daylilies. The deer always eat the buds before they bloom. If you have deer, plant something else.”
Another added: “Do you have deer where you live? They’re like cotton candy to them.”
While a third wrote: “[Get a] camera. They are cheap. It’s also an odd place to cut them (for a human). Looks like something a deer would do. But I can’t get a good look at the flowers to see if it’s something they’d eat.”
Someone else also shared that if a deer is the culprit, Heather could try planting flowers they don’t like, such as lavender, yarrow, echinacea, beebalm, and certain types of allium.