THIEVES have stolen hanging baskets in full bloom from a pub that annually brightens up Heworth.

The Nags Head has been decorated with the floral display every year during the ten years the current landlord, Jim Melsom, has run the pub, and under the previous landlord before him.

But for the first time ever, two hanging baskets and a trough, in which the flowers, including petunias, were coming along very well, have been taken away.

Mr Melsom said the theft, which happened between Thursday night and Friday morning, was “petty”.

He said: “We’re proud of our flowers and everybody knows we do them every year. But we’ve never had a problem before. It makes the pub look happy and it does cheer people up when they see something like that.”

The arrangements are assembled every year for the pub by Colin and Margaret Garnett, a retired couple with a love for gardening, who put on the display out of kindness and community spirit every year.

Mr Melsom said: “A piece like that would cost about £35 per basket from a garden centre, but they wouldn’t be as good as these. Nobody does them like them.

“We’re upset. We look after them and they take a lot of looking after to keep them in the condition we keep them.

“All these years and somebody goes and takes them. I’m fed up about it. You do these things to make the place look nice and the area look nice. It’s pathetic,” he said.