Is it vandalism to treat plants on public property like this?

Last year we had an incident where the local thespians, who perform at the property, took it upon themselves to prune a mature fig tree because it was in the way of their entrance/hiding or whatever. My loppers where left out of place as evidence and the offensive branch had been left half way across the lawn.

And then there was the photographic group before Easter who had clearly thought the little girl with some tiny daffodils would look so cute. The daffodils were cut with scissors from around the mid 19C home. All the daffodils in the garden are recorded and dated, not to mention catalogued with source and order number. The daffodil heads were discarded across the porch.

This latest incident though left me speechless. The thespians are performing on a different side of the house. They could not understand why we would not let them prune the mature and historic camellia (C.japonica) which apparently was where their stage needed to be. When approached I made it clear that contrary to their information, camellias bloom over the winter and you do not prune them in September. So this morning I arrive and the stage is assembled, rammed up against the camelia, as close as they can get without snapping branches. It seems though that a little clump of autumn clematis was also in the way – so they severed the vine at the ground and discarded it!!!!

The severed root                                               The sorry sight

The sad and sorry pile of debris was left alongside the location of the vine. My first thought was to call the authorities and claim property abuse/vandalism.

So yet again I am stunned at how people treat the plants and shrubs on a historic property, many are century old, and all have historic significance which seems to be lost on the population as a whole.

Note: the official word is that there was a misunderstanding – they thought that they were given permission to prune the shrubs.  My view is that common sense should have prevailed and cutting down a vine at ground level is way more than ‘pruning’. A belated policy of ‘touch nothing unless it is in writing’ is now in place.