Winnipeggers' love for a bargain is driving a market for stolen landscaping materials, from hot rocks to pilfered plants.
Ken Land, manager of St. Mary's Nursery and president of the trade association Landscape Manitoba in Canada, says most garden centres have been approached by shady merchants with low-priced goods.
"Somebody'll pull into the yard, he'll have a pickup truck and it'll have a whole bunch of stone in the back, or a whole bunch of shrubs of one kind or another in the back, and they'll be looking to sell them inexpensively," he said.
"It's not something most guys will talk about," he adds, but "pretty much every garden centre at one time in their existence has been approached to buy product this way."
The unreasonably low prices tip him off that the goods are likely stolen, either from other garden centres, quarries or newly landscaped yards, Land says.
Although it is illegal to purchase stolen property, "it's really hard to prove that they're stolen… even if you had the police there," he says, because there is no tagging system for landscaping materials.
Legitimate landscaping businesses will steer clear of hot goods, Land adds, but some unscrupulous dealers — and unknowing homeowners — fuel the underground market.
Gord Bone, an instructor in greenspace management at Red River College, recommends consumers check their landscapers' references before committing. If a company quotes a price that seems unusually low, it could be dealing in stolen goods, he says.
While it may be tempting to go for the good deal, Bone warned that companies offering suspiciously low-priced goods are usually uninsured, which means consumers have no recourse if they aren't happy with the work or materials