A pensioner who hoped to win her town’s floral display contest for the third time in a row was unceremoniously nobbled by jealous rivals who struck in the dead of night.

Envy can be rampant in small communities, where individual pride takes precedence over civic pride and low cunning elbows aside aboveboard honesty for the sake of winning a prize or getting a name on a certificate. Sharp practice has long been the name of the game at village vegetable shows, with midnight raids on leeks creaking under their own weight as they await the fulfilment of their prize-winning potential.

Now, deep in the Fenland of East Anglia, floral displays have again fallen victim to the underhand tactics born of bitter rivalry. It seems that no geranium is safe.

For the past two years Dorothy Mills’s plant pots and hanging baskets have gained her first prize in the Best Residential Housefront category in the Wisbech In Bloom contest at the Cambridgeshire town. This year she has been demoted to second place after thieves stole many of her geraniums and pelargoniums.

After several of her baskets disappeared overnight Mrs Mills, 81, received an anonymous call saying: “You will not win for a third time.”

The judges recognised yesterday that green eyes rather than fingers appeared to be behind the inevitable demotion of Mrs Mills to second place. “She showed what could be done in a small space. It makes people jealous because they can’t do as well as someone who is older than them,” the judges’ report said.

Mrs Mills said: “I have never known anything like it. It’s a bit nasty considering it’s only a competition. We thought someone had taken them to sell at a car boot sale, but when I had the call I knew that was not the case.”

She remembered watering the plants the previous evening; the next day she found that two hanging baskets had been stolen, as well as a double basket standing near her front door, two tubs and an assortment of smaller plant containers.

She assumed that the thieves had clippers as the baskets were secured to their hangers by wire. “I was going to pull out of the competition because I was so upset, but everyone I told kept telling me not to give in.”

As well as her runner-up prize in the housefront category, Mrs Mills took third place in the overall competition.

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