As we all know, bonsai plants — in all its zen miniature tree-like glory — are really quite expensive and fragile. Extremely smitten by their beauty and undeterred by the prospect of being caught, Teo Tiong Guan broke into several community gardens and even a flat to filch them.
In total, he stole nine bonsai plants, worth more than $12,000 over two months last year, TODAY reports. His radical love for bonsai has landed the 51-year-old horticulture enthusiast a one-year jail sentence for trespassing and theft.
His shrub-stealing spree began on May 14 last year, when he walked past bonsai plants at Yuhua Community Centre. ‘Twas love at first sight, and he plotted to steal them as he found them beautiful.
Three days later, Teo turned up at the locked premises and reached over the surrounding wall to grab two pots of bonsai — valued at $2,000 each. The plants were transferred into plastic bags, and he politely returned the pots at the garden. The stolen bonsai were planted in his own pots back home.
Days after the theft, he struck again — this time at a Residents’ Corner Garden along Jurong East Street 21. The garden, however, was surrounded by walls and a metal roof, but he got past the barriers by bringing a metal-cutting tool to cut the padlock to the premises. Two adenium plants — of the bonsai family — were plucked from their pots again, and planted in his own ones at his house. Both were valued at $300 each.
Three more similar thefts were carried out nearby in the weeks to come. One of which saw him breaking into a flat at Block 261along Jurong East Street 24.
In court, it was revealed that Teo suffered from anti-social personality disorder, and is still receiving psychiatric treatment. The plants were recovered upon his arrest, and presumably resume their zen-like state in their former pots.
