Neighborhood “replants hope” after plants are stolen from a church

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD)- On the corner of Amherst and Hanover Street sits a planter in front of St John’s Chapel.

“For years and years, it was the center of small-town drug dealing,” Neighbor, Steve Bailey said.

It was a place where Bailey said people would come for all the wrong reasons.

“A lot of guys used to drink beer here and throw the beer cans here,” Bailey said.

A few weeks ago, Bailey and his neighbor, Jordan Peeler, turned the church planter around and beautified it.

“It’s just part of the efforts we’ve made in the neighborhood, and I think people were really happy with it. I had people walking from all over the place saying wow isn’t that great,” Bailey said.

However, it wasn’t long before someone came through and took several of the plants.

“To see that someone was stealing plants from the church was shocking,” another neighbor, Stacey Barrington said.

A note was also posted around the neighborhood saying the beautifiers had a hidden agenda.

Bailey and Peeler say that only motivated them to keep replanting hope.

“Just because someone stole our plants does not mean we’re going to stop planting. We’re not even going to put a fence up, we’re going to keep planting because we don’t want to stop. This is fun. We like doing this,” Peeler said.

This weekend Bailey and Peeler got together with other neighbors to replace the plants stolen,
using what could have been a discouragement, to show the neighborhood they care.

Peeler said, “I hope that they feel proud of this street corner, of Charleston in general, of how beautiful this place is.”

Bailey and Peeler said they hope whoever stole the plants will learn from their mistake.