Parks Department groundsman Wilfred Oakes discovered the fifth planting at 6:15 AM on Monday when he arrived to unlock the maintenance shed at the eastern end of Caldecott Square. Four of the six cast-iron planters along the north side of the square had been replanted overnight with wild thyme and lady’s bedstraw — native species, well-suited to shallow soil and full sun, arranged in alternating clusters with what Oakes described as “professional-quality spacing.”

The soil had been turned and amended with what appeared to be composted leaf mould. A small wooden label, the kind sold at nurseries, was pressed into the earth of each planter. The labels read, in neat block capitals: THYME and BEDSTRAW.

Pinned to the fountain railing with a common brass tack was a note. The previous notes had been brief — “More foxgloves please” was the most memorable. This one was different. Written in the same careful hand, on the same cream card stock, it read:

What the city forgot the city still grows. What the rain remembers nobody knows.

Parks superintendent Nora Quinlan arrived at 7:30 AM, examined the plantings, removed the note, read it twice, and placed it in her desk drawer alongside the previous four.

“I am not going to pretend this is acceptable,” Quinlan said. “Municipal planters are maintained by the Parks Department according to a seasonal planting schedule approved by the Committee for Public Spaces. Wildflowers are not on the schedule.”

She paused.

“However. The cornflowers from March are thriving. The wild violets have spread. The foxgloves are magnificent. And whoever is doing this has better drainage technique than my Tuesday crew.”

This is the fifth planting since 24 March, when cornflowers appeared overnight in two planters. Wild violets followed on 1 April, primroses and foxgloves on 7 April, and meadowsweet on approximately 14 April. The intervals are roughly weekly. The species selection has been consistently native, pollinator-friendly, and appropriate for the planters’ exposure and soil depth.

The night watchman, Gerald Oakes — brother of the groundsman, a fact that Caldecott Square generates its own small symmetries — was on his rounds at approximately 2:20 AM Monday morning. He saw a figure with a wheelbarrow near the northern planters. This is the second sighting; the first, also by Gerald Oakes, was on 7 April.

“Same person, I believe,” Oakes said. “Medium height, dark coat, hat of some kind. Moving quietly but not furtively — they weren’t trying to hide, exactly. They were just getting on with it.”

Asked whether he challenged the figure, Oakes said he had not.

“They were humming,” he said. “I couldn’t make out the tune. But a person who hums while gardening at two in the morning is not, in my experience, a person who means harm.”

The Metropolitan Constabulary has received no complaints regarding the plantings. No property has been damaged. The Committee for Public Spaces has not discussed the matter. The planters, which had contained bare soil and cigarette ends since the autumn seasonal clear-out, now contain wildflowers.

Quinlan, asked directly whether the Parks Department has been maintaining the unauthorised plantings, was silent for four seconds.

“We water everything in Caldecott Square,” she said. “That is our job.”