Katherine, I hear your concern, I live in Garden City and theft is not a huge problem here but I do avoid gardening in the front yard, especially planters and things that people could walk off with. It might help if you could put up a short chain link fence as a bit of a deterrent. That might be a bit expensive though. Otherwise, maybe put the tomatoes at the back, so people would have to go further in, and put less stealable stuff at the front, at least it might rule out impulse theft. If someone wants your veggies they will take them but these little things might make it less tempting. It would be heartbreaking to have things stolen from your garden, I think.

Just a funny aside, I used to have a neighbour who one day knocked at my back door and informed me that she had helped herself to a large bouquet of my yellow roses to put on her mother's grave. They were already cut and in her hand. I just did not know what to say. What do you say?

I would have given my condolences for both her mother and my flowers! Seriously I would have told her in future to please ask me if I would cut a flower for her. She obviously is not a plant person.
As for people taking plants etc. from your garden - small ornamentals are sometime fooled around with by kids or taken. As for planters, in some areas people are actually burying stones or building blocks and using wire to secure the plant up through the watering hole and burying the block so you can't see the whole thing being secured. It really depends on your neighborhood. Look around - what do your neighbors have out?

Never having been to Winnipeg, I have no idea at all what that area of the city is like, but I live in downtown Montreal, and I know that some areas are difficult to garden in due to theft and vandalism.

If your area has a lot of pedestrian traffic, or is near a school, then I'd avoid planting anything with big showy flowers. There are far too many people who will think nothing of picking your flowers only to toss them away two blocks down. I see it time and again in my neighbourhood :-(.

Tomatoes might prove tempting to some people too, but I think if you are in an urban area you might have more of a problem with squirrels and birds stealing your tomatoes than with people. Perhaps if you hammer together a small cage out of wood and chickenwire, you'll prevent animal theft and deter people.

Weather it's going to be in the ground, or in a planter, don't plant anything particularly valuable. 99.9% of people will ignore it or just admire it from afar, but there are enough idiots out there that you have to accept that they will strike eventually, and you don't want them to take or wreck your prize plants. I lost several plants out back until I put a chain and a lock on the gate, and made the fence taller by attaching wooden trellis. I still lose tomatoes, but it's to the evil tree rats (aka squirrels). I'm going to have to try fencing them in completely this year.

Northspruce - what an awful thing for someone to do without asking first! I think I would have done something that would have made her feel guilty. Like getting a stricken look on my face and saying "My mum's roses! Those roses were planted in memory of my mother/grandmother/daughter/whatever fits". If she wanted to honour her mother she shouldn't have done it with stolen goods!

BP

Actually, to the neighbour's credit, I had purchased the house only the year before with no for-sale sign, so she might have felt free with the previous occupant. Who was in fact my grandmother. So you're not far off the mark, Bonnie. LOL.

And yes you're exactly right about losing vegetables to city wildlife, if it's not tree rats it's starlings that come through in a mob and peck holes in everything.

How about telling you neighbor that your were thinking of putting those flowers on a grave of one of YOUR relatives?