Thieves are pillaging plants from front yards and public spaces across the Brisbane region, getting off scot-free despite the best efforts of residents and landscapers.

ABC Radio Brisbane listeners vented their anger after a photograph on social media showed a mulch-covered garden bed riddled with holes where plants once stood.

Merike: "A couple of months back someone stole my Bougainvillea plant from my front garden. It was in a big heavy pot and luckily they left this pot behind. So annoying. This was in Calamvale."

Seath: "Last year I saw a mum with a pram standing next to a garden in front of a business about 9:00 on a Friday night. Her partner then appeared out of the garden with a handful of plants and was filling up the pram with them!"

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Wayne: "I do commercial work. First late-night shopping at a major northside shopping centre I had $5,000 worth of plants stolen."

David: "Try working for local government. Any garden you plant out, expect 10 to 50 per cent loss."

Worse still, landscapers for housing developments and public parks say they are normally expected to cover the cost of replacing stolen plants.

A garden bed at a residential estate is riddled with holes where plants used to be. ( Supplied: Chris Hooper )

Landscape Queensland president Dave Taylor said he had caught a number of green-thumbed thieves red-handed, taking plants from deserted worksites when they think no-one is watching.

"I caught an elderly couple with a brand new car and they had the boot up and were loading all the plants," he said.

"They made out that they thought they were free."

Another time, Mr Taylor returned to a subdivision to discover 60 trees were taken.

"That's like a semi-trailer worth of trees. It was all one type of tree that at that time none of the nurseries had."

Landscape Queensland does not keep statistics on how much plant theft costs the industry annually.

However, Mr Taylor explained that buying replacement plants was not the only price paid by the industry.

A hole in the ground left behind by a plant thief at Eden's Crossing estate. ( Supplied: Chris Hooper )

"The annoying thing about plants is once you've got them established and then you get a few pinched around the place, the problem is to actually go back and get them watered," he said.

"The cost of sending a man to go back and water those 40 or 50 plants over the next six weeks is where that $6 plant could end up being a $15 plant."

As for who is to blame, Mr Taylor said he believed it was a mix of opportunistic gardeners, people looking to re-sell the plants at markets, and nefarious unlicensed landscapers.

"To take a tree that's two metres out of the ground doesn't take a couple of minutes.

"It's got to be dug out; two men probably have to lift it onto a truck."

Mr Taylor says landscaping companies often wear the cost of plant theft from major urban developments. ( ABC Radio Brisbane: Hailey Renault )

Lilly pilly hedges targeted twice

When Hendra business owner Penny Wolff hired a landscaper to plant a row of lilly pillies bordering her shop's parking lot, she didn't think she would need to replace them anytime soon.

But late one night a mystery man filled the boot of his car with 12 of her plants.

"We've got missing spots staggered all the way through where we have had a little plant thief that's been coming and helping himself to our well-established lilly pillies," she said.

"We had a landscaper in who replanted them for us, which cost us quite a lot again.

"Only a couple of months later we had another nine of them taken."

Penny Wolff had lilly pilly plants stolen from her business twice in 2017. ( ABC Radio Brisbane: Hailey Renault )

Ms Wolff said she reported the theft to police and supplied them with footage of the perpetrator filmed by a neighbour.

"We just haven't gone ahead and [planted] again because we're fearful he'll come back and do it for the third time," she said.

"Another suggestion was that we pay to put trackers on the trees so the next time they're taken they can be tracked to the location they've been taken to.

"We just don't want to spend the money on putting trackers on trees; it seems a little obscene."

A plant thief has left large gaps in Ms Wolff's lilly pilly hedge.

Expensive plants pinched

Louise Edmonds lost five valuable desert rose plants last month.

"I went down to the letterbox ... and just noticed a big gap where they were," she said.

"I thought something might have eaten them to begin with, but I had a look at all the holes and they've been pulled out."

She had just returned from a holiday when she noticed the missing plants.

"I didn't see any reason to worry about them because they've been there for three years.

"I think when you put something in a garden you don't expect people to take it out."

Mature desert rose plants can fetch hundreds of dollars.

Ms Edmonds said she estimated the five stolen plants would cost her $1,000 to replace.

Expensive desert rose and native grass trees are common targets for thieves. ( Flickr: Trekr )

Theft prevention costly

Police say security devices could "certainly assist with their investigations", however gardeners agree that many are costly and ineffective.

So how can you avoid being a target of plant theft?

Mr Taylor said opting for less exotic plants was a good place to start.

"A lot of people don't like the native plants," he said.

Brisbane, Logan and Ipswich councils all said they did not have any issue with plant theft from parks or gardens.

But last year a West Australian council injected some of its more valuable plants with microchips, similar to those used to identify cats and dogs, to stop them from being stolen.

Another Brisbane landscaper said he used the threat of tracked plants to deter thieves too.

Justin: "At one job I left a handwritten note saying 'all plants are microchipped' to avoid theft. The next day five or so of the builders asked if this was true."

Mr Taylor said some landscapers fortified the roots of plants with star pickets and painted markings on their trunks to deter thieves but with little success.