Vandals or thieves have left Dartmouth's flower team blooming angry after they attacked brand new displays within days of a town centre planting effort.

The bloom group spent an hour planting out flower troughs around the Boat Float on Tuesday last week with various spring plants including trailing ivy and daffodils.

Just three days later someone tore out plants from two of the troughs and either stole them or dumped them.

The Dartmouth in Bloom volunteers found holes where the plants had been when they inspected the troughs on Saturday morning.

Bloom team secretary Melanie Trent: 'The plants are there for the whole of the town, so stealing them is stealing from the whole town.'

She said that the troughs had been planted out for the spring and it is intended to replant them later in the year with 'edible' plants like herbs because the theme for this year's Royal Horticultural Society national bloom competition is Edible Britain.

This year bloom show in Dartmouth is particularly important because the town has been handed a shot at a national award for only the second in the three decades it has been competing.

Mrs Trent said that single plants had been stolen from two of the troughs.

She said that similar thefts had taken place last October when the troughs had been planted with cyclamen.

'Somebody seems to be keeping an eye out for when new plants go in,' she said.

The town's bloom team has also been doing planting work at the beds next to the welcome sign at the entrance to the town.

Bloom group chairman Stevie Rogers said: 'There's great news on the horizon for another bed at the top of the town.

'We haven't quite finalised the details yet, and they may need some help with the heavy stuff, but we'll have news very soon of a local youth group making one of the prominent beds on the entrance to Dartmouth their own.

'We're starting to work with so many different groups in Dartmouth.'

Meanwhile treasurer Debbie Morris has been looking carefully at the group finances to find ways of making the sponsorship far more affordable and attractive to Dartmouth in Bloom's supporters.

She said that information about new, simpler, lower-cost sponsorship packages will be released as soon as the plan's been approved.

'Everyone has to make the money go further nowadays,' she explained.

'Sponsorship has to be affordable and practical or it just doesn't work.

'That's why some of our sponsors will be able to choose to give us a little time rather than a lot of cash.

'This year we all have to do more with less money. Dartmouth in Bloom is no exception.'