AS a keen gardener, always willing to exchange or give cuttings and seeds and feeling that others were of a similar disposition, I was stunned to discover that a couple had parked at the front of our cottage, engine running, while the elderly woman got out to steal seeds from my pink hollyhock and pull up the only white one I had by the roots.

As my husband saw them and ran round to the front, they drove away.

I am more upset because I would willingly have given them seeds when ready, they only had to ask. I only had a small white hollyhock that I had grown from seed and have never had white ones before.

Neither did I ever imagine that anyone would steal it, or it would have been taken to a safer spot.

So your readers should be on the lookout for the senior citizen garden plant snatcher who I hope, if they read this, will be ashamed of themselves.

JOYCE VANN Glazebrook