Viewing post #1603188 by vurbil

RoseBlush1 said:

Are you certain the caretaker is someone hired to take care of the park ?

This is not necessarily true in today's economy. Many public parks would not exist if it were not for the volunteers who donate their time, labor and expertise to maintain the park. There are not enough public funds to cover all of the demands for funding and parks are often on the bottom of the list.

Unfortunately, there are never enough volunteers for many parks, so the plantings must be less diversified than they used to be in the past.

I have volunteered in a public rose garden and spent hours taking care of roses that have become quite rare because they are no longer in commerce. It was heartbreaking to see a fine plant whittled away by one person taking a cutting here, and then another person taking a cutting there, and more people taking more cuttings. Each person thought, "I am only taking a little piece of the rose, I am not taking the whole plant."

We actually had to relocate some of the roses so that they could be saved. To me, that was so incredibly sad because that meant that most people would never see the rose growing in person. They would only see photos of the rose.

Cutting a rose to the ground is an irresponsible use of public property. I would not advocate doing that. In fact, I'd strongly condemn it. Another issue I haven't touched on before is that of patented plants. You shouldn't propagate patented plants and it's actually illegal to do so.

If there were an apple tree in a public park, would you consider it theft for a member of the community to pick the apple and eat it? Who does the apple tree belong to? Should the caretaker and other volunteers get to eat all the apples? Does the apple tree belong to them? What should become of the apples?