A KEEN gardener has been forced to stay indoors this spring after a spate of burglaries.Julie Clarke, 43, of Little Croft Street, Maidenhall Estate, Ipswich, has several times fallen victim to thieves intent on making her and her children's lives a misery.

A KEEN Gardener has been forced to stay indoors this spring after a spate of burglaries.

Julie Clarke, 43, of Little Croft Street, Maidenhall Estate, Ipswich, has several times fallen victim to thieves intent on making her and her children's lives a misery.

Ms Clarke became anxious about the security of her property in January when her fence blew down in a gale, leaving her much-loved garden exposed to vandals and burglars.

Since then Ms Clarke and her children David, 18, Shaun, 19 and Sabrina, 16, have had to deal with a catalogue of thefts from their once well groomed garden.

Ms Clarke said: “Since my fence blew down anybody can get into my garden.

I can't afford to put up a new fence and my landlord says it belongs to next door.

My son's bike has gone missing and my son's girlfriend's bike, we've had two arson attacks on our shed and my flower pots keep disappearing.

I'm a single parent so I've not been able to afford to replace the fencing but I brought some bamboo fencing and before I even had a chance to put it up it was stolen from the garden, still in the packaging.”

Ms Clarke said the last straw came in March, when the persistent thieves got into her shed and set fire to it.

She said: “I'm just so fed up with it all, it's really gets you down.

I've had to bring all my pots into the house because they keep disappearing and I keep having to replace them.

I've no room to move inside!”

Ms Clarke said she's determined not to let the burglars get the better of her and she's going to keep on gardening.

She said: “It does make you think, why should I bother if there just going to mess it up?

It makes me want to give up but I'm not going to let them do this to me, I'm going to keep going.”

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