300 Christmas trees were stolen from High Legh Garden Centre in Knutsford, Cheshire, during an overnight raid. Police have warned of other garden centres being targeted.
Centre manager Neil Phelps told diyweek.net that the thieves gained access to the site through a low fence that backs onto private woodland and they loaded the Nordmann Fir trees, ranging between five and seven foot, onto a truck and used the woodland as a route back to the main road.

"The police said that at this time of year people know garden centres are carrying a lot of trees and the thieves would have come here a couple of weeks before to see how they can get in and out," Mr Phelps explained. He also said that, thankfully, his supplier's deadline for ordering replenishment stock was the day after the burglary took place. "We managed to source the same additional stock, but at the same price, which wasn't good."

Mr Phelps said his customers were not affected and many were not even aware of the incident as Christmas trees are only a fraction of what the garden centre sells. He said the staff were upset but worked hard to sell the trees that were left.

"All garden centres are subject to being attacked by criminals and our main perimeters are quite strong, but one side is backing onto someone else's land," he added. "The real shocker was that we are getting CCTV installed but that's not till next week, so the timing wasn't great!

"The police told us that two other retailers had been targeted on the same night. They believe there is a gang working out of Wythenshawe, Manchester and one gang working out of Stoke. But they're like a needle in a hay stack. But the police are taking this quite seriously and paying good attention to it, so I'm thankful for that."

Mr Phelps said that the cost of damage to the site is very minimal and he hopes it will be a successful Christmas at the garden centre.