Photos: Eureka Department of Community Services.

Someone, sometime late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, walked into Eureka’s public dahlia garden near Sequoia Park Zoo with a shovel and a container and left with eight of the garden’s specimens, along with a couple of other plants.

Greg Ausburn, the city’s parks maintenance supervisor, told the Outpost today that eight dahlias, one marigold and a Union Jack were taken in the middle of the night, and all signs were that the thief was someone who came prepared for a flower heist.

“If you just take those and walk out with ‘em, you’re going to leave a dirt trail where they were dug up and you’re going to leave a petal trail,” Ausburn told the Outpost. “There was no trail. They either put ‘em in a bag or put em in a box or put em in a bucket, or something. It wasn’t just a random kind of thing.”

Ausburn said that though the city knows how many flowers were stolen, it doesn’t know which dahlias they were. The city doesn’t keep a detailed inventory of which varieties are planted where.

“It’s kind of an informal garden,” Ausburn said. “It’s not a formal garden that’s laid out with a whole lot of structure.”

In any case, the city would like to get them back, and to discourage future thievery. If you have any information about where these plants ended up, Ausburn would like to hear from you. You can reach him at (707) 441-4226.