Residents of Petworth: protect your gardens.

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Sound like a silly warning? Who would go after stuff like carrots, why would anyone steal greenery? Ask Deborah Bennett, whose herb garden was raided earlier this week.

"It was just a bold act," says Bennett, who wrote about the incident on a wrote on a neighborhood listserv. "I felt very violated that someone would do that."

Sage was stolen. Tarragon and thyme were targeted. Rosemary and oregano were removed from planting beds — all dug up with surgical precision. The herbs won't be replaced until Bennett figures out a better way to secure her backyard.

It might seem like a small crime, but those plants were worth a lot of money. They had been growing for years, producing so much that Bennett had taken to giving the surplus to friends and a local restaurant. She estimates that they were worth about $700 to $1,000, and she says that she plans on filling out a police report.

"Everything was removed," she says. "I'm thinking whoever took them definitely knew what they were and knew they had some monetary value to them."

Bennett says the plants, each about the size of small hydrangeas, were stolen from a backyard planter box sometime between Thursday and Monday. It could have been a one-man job, but the skill behind the theft was quite impressive.

"I would have never been able to remove the plants as surgically as they did," she says. "There is not one root left."