A act of wanton vandalism at one of the nation’s most celebrated gardens has ignited outrage after anti-Israel protesters destroyed hundreds of flowers at the University of Michigan.

Demonstrators stormed the W.E. Upjohn Peony Garden, located in the university’s Nichols Arboretum, and decapitated a third of the prized peony blooms with their buds and flowers left littering the ground. 

Staff discovered the carnage when they arrived early Sunday morning in what police are calling a politically motivated attack.

The garden is famed for being the largest collection of blooming peonies in the nation. Nearby, roughly 100 flyers were left behind urging solidarity with Palestine and declaring in stark language: ‘Plant lives don’t matter. Human lives do.’

The attack, which struck just as the garden was reaching its peak bloom, destroyed thousands of flowers in what university officials have called an unprecedented act of destruction at the historic site. 

An estimated 250 plants were decapitated, with thousands of buds and blooms hacked off and strewn in the dirt. 

The flyers, emblazoned with calls to ‘wear a keffiyeh’ and ‘fly the Palestinian flag instead of the US one,’ left no ambiguity about the protest’s political intent. 

Authorities have launched an investigation but say no group has yet claimed responsibility.

‘This was a deliberate desecration, not random vandalism,’ a University of Michigan spokesperson said.

The attack came amid ongoing tensions worldwide over the war between Israel and Hamas, a conflict that has claimed the lives of around 50,000 Palestinians according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and left over 1,200 Israelis dead following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks.

The University of Michigan Division of Public Safety and Security said the desecration was discovered around 6am on Sunday by stunned staff at the Nichols Arboretum, where the historic garden resides. 

In a somber statement, the department confirmed that no group had yet claimed responsibility for the attack, and that an investigation remains ongoing.

Notably silent was the TAHRIR Coalition, the university’s primary pro-Palestinian protest group, which has previously demanded the university divest from Israel. The coalition did not comment on social media or respond to media inquiries.

The destruction was swift, merciless, and, as many have pointed out, entirely futile.

‘What would possess someone just to destroy nature and the beauty of it? It´s just unfathomable,’ visitor Linda J.K. Klenczar asked on Monday. ‘There´s no explanation. I don’t know if they’re going to catch someone who did this. They need to explain themselves.’ 

James Welcher, a local resident who witnessed the aftermath firsthand, described the scene on social media:

‘Early on June 1st, 2025, one or more vandals attacked the outdoor biological museum that is the Ann Arbor Peony Garden at the University of Michigan Nichols Arboretum. They chopped off thousands of blooms as well as buds that had not yet opened, leaving them in the dirt where they fell. There are several rows of plots, and it appears they walked along a third to a half, cutting as they moved.’ 

Welcher added that a director at the garden was still cleaning up the wreckage with a wheelbarrow when he arrived in the afternoon, methodically removing the fallen petals.

‘The vandal(s) didn’t steal any flowers. Their goal was desecration,’ Welcher wrote. ‘The majority were the buds, but they also took off all the blooms they could.’ 

He quoted the director reassuring distraught visitors: ‘This won’t harm the plants. They’re fine,’ though it was clear the staff were struggling to process the senseless act.

The peony garden has been a fixture of Ann Arbor for almost a century and draws thousands of visitors every year, particularly during its famed peak bloom which was just beginning last weekend.

On social media, outrage was swift. ‘Free Palestine but WTH. How is killing a bunch of plants in one town 1,000s of miles away inching humanity closer to ending one of the longest-running genocides?’ one user posted.

‘Protesting becomes vandalism when it’s ill-targeted, aimless, and has no reasonable way of building awareness without minimizing backlash from those you could’ve maybe reached.’

Another commenter was more resigned: ‘If their goal was to highlight how people care more about flowers than Gazans, I guess they have succeeded. It saddens me to see people destroying a lovely part of their own community just to prove a point.’

For many, the destruction struck a deeply personal chord with one user, recalling fond memories of the garden.

‘We took our engagement photos in the peony garden and I have one framed on my desk. This breaks my heart.’ 

Another user didn’t mince words: ‘Our campus culture is broken if anyone thought this was acceptable. We need to heal as a community and find permanent solutions for the ongoing pain that has been left to fester. This has to end, and it takes all of us – exercising humility, and speaking with reasonable protest voices – to compromise on the virtues of humanity and empathy.’

Yet another voice warned of what could lie ahead if such acts went unchecked: ‘The longer the university allows the behavior to fester, the more we can anticipate such criminal behavior.’

Even some supporters of the Palestinian cause distanced themselves from the act. 

Luke Newman, 25, a groundskeeper at the university and graduate student at Eastern Michigan University who has participated in past Palestine solidarity protests, called the vandalism ‘unfortunate and upsetting.’

‘I sympathize with the vandal in terms of their frustration at the situation in Palestine,’ Newman said. ‘It’s just unfortunate and upsetting to me that they don’t have a positive way to take that frustration and turn it into something that will form community ties.’ 

University officials, while urging calm, have not yet announced any additional security measures for the Arboretum.

For now, the garden stands as both a crime scene and a somber memorial a reminder of how far some are willing to go in the name of protest.

Welcher told DailyMail.com how amid the devastation, there were moments of quiet resilience. 

He recounted seeing two young girls surveying the damage. 

One said softly, ‘Someone cut them.’ The other, undeterred, replied with a determination far beyond her years: ‘They’ll grow back.’

The W.E. Upjohn Peony Garden features the largest collection of historic – pre-1950 – herbaceous peonies in North America, ‘and likely the world,’ curator David Michener said.

‘Once you come here to the Peony Garden, you´ll be mesmerized, and you´ll understand why people love peonies,’ he said. ‘The fragrances, the colors, the forms, it´s just intoxicating.’

The peony watch is a spectator sport with tens of thousands of visitors arriving at The Arb each spring to behold the unique perennials — so many that visitors have to be bused in.

It’s a moving target each year as to when the peonies will reach peak bloom. And one of great interest – with scores of peony-watchers glued to the Arb´s Instagram page for updates.

‘What makes it so challenging to predict is they pay no attention to the calendar,’ Michener said. ‘They´re driven totally by day and night temperatures.’

The campus Peony Garden contains more than 300 historic cultivated varieties from the 19th and early 20th centuries, representing American, Canadian and European peonies of the era. The garden typically features up to 10,000 flowers at peak bloom.

‘It´s very colorful. I have a lot of peonies in my backyard, so I have a spot for them. But they´re a beautiful flower,’ said another visitor on Monday, 18-year-old Melanie Millar who was at the garden to take photos with friends to celebrate their high school graduation. 

Their colorful blossoms draw admirers from Michigan and beyond, but the peonies´ beauty is not their primary function. The garden is designed as a support mechanism for academia — to be a research collection for students and faculty to explore genomics and social issues.

Michener and his colleagues at Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum work closely with their sister garden in Minsk, the Central Botanical Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, trying to understand how ornamental peonies are related to each other and the wild, ancestral species.

Michigan´s Peony Garden is free to visit and open from sunrise to sunset. For those drawn to the ancient plant´s scent, Michener said it´s best to show up earlier in the day or later in the evening, when the fragrances are the best.