The leader of the Mills Hill Brownies has criticised ‘mindless idiots’ who keep ripping up their planters.

Kathy Owen lives in Royton but leads the local girl-guiding group of 15 seven to 10-year-olds.

The Firwood Park planters provide the girls with a space to plant vegetables and flowers, with five girls taking care of each of the three planters.

The Oldham Times: The planters were ripped up some time on Monday eveningThe planters were ripped up some time on Monday evening (Image: Michael Greenhalgh)

However, the planters have now been ripped up for the fourth time in an apparent act of vandalism on Monday evening.

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Ms Owen said: “The girls have been really, really good. We’ve been going up there every week. A lot of the stuff they’ve done, they’ve planted from seeds and they’ve grown up.

“It’s just been destroyed. Just these mindless acts of vandalism, and this is the fourth time now that this has happened."

The 40-year-old added: “It’s just absolutely gutting really, the girls have worked so hard – they’ve planted all these things from seeds and the idea is then that they watch them grow and they can start to benefit and the community can benefit from it.

“You just get these blooming idiots who just think it’s a good idea to go and ruin it all.”

Previously, vandals have pulled down bird feeders, thrown bags of soil around, and pulled up plants.

Ms Owen said the girls are ‘really upset’ at the vandalism.

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She added: “They’ve put all this work in and we’ve been going up every week, and then they just come and ruin it. All this work that they do and it’s ruined within five or 10 minutes of them being there.”

The brownie leader said there is a lot of speculation about who is doing it, and members of the Firwood and District Residents’ Association have speculated that the vandalism is linked to other vandalism in the community woodland.

Recently, vandals have burned children’s play equipment in the area, and signage at the entrance to the woodland has also been vandalised.

Ms Owen said: “There’s a lot of speculation, people say they keep saying this group of lads around, and apparently they’ve done damage to other things like throwing stones at birds. We think it’s the same ones that have ruining our chimes.

"The boards have been taken down and the boards have been taken down and stolen as well today.

“There’s a lot of speculation that it’s this same group of lads, but there’s no proof.”