A three-year-old boy's proud gardening project has been reduced to heartbreak after a man was caught on CCTV walking into the family's Traralgon front yard and brazenly stealing his favourite flower pot — just hours after the child had carefully chosen and planted it with his mother.

Victorian mum Therase Jackson said her son Harry spotted the gap among his seven newly planted pots the following morning as the family headed out for the school run. Security footage later revealed the theft had taken place at around 7.42pm the previous Thursday, with a man calmly entering the yard and carrying away the pot containing Harry's beloved yellow flowers while a woman waited nearby.

A day of flowers ended by a brazen theft

The day had begun as a special outing between mother and son. With Harry's older brother at school and Harry himself off from kindergarten, Ms Jackson suggested they spend the day gardening. The pair made a trip to Bunnings, where Harry eagerly filled a child's trolley with brightly coloured flowers.

"Every time he'd walk past a bright, colourful flower, he'd be like, 'I want that one'," Ms Jackson said.

Their original plan was to plant the flowers in a strip along the driveway, but hard-packed crushed brick beneath the soil forced them to return to Bunnings a second time to purchase pots. By the afternoon, Harry had helped plant seven pots lined up outside the family home — his favourite being the one with yellow flowers.

The little boy was so thrilled with the finished display that he talked about it on the drive to collect his brother from school. "Even his brother was like, 'Oh my gosh, I love that yellow one!'" Ms Jackson recalled.

CCTV shows pair scoping out the yard hours earlier

What made the theft particularly troubling was footage from earlier that same evening, which appears to show the same man and woman walking past the property in daylight — nearly two hours before the pot went missing. Ms Jackson believes the man spotted the yellow flower pot on that first pass and deliberately returned for it later.

"When I looked at the footage in the first place, I thought it was very weird because as they walked past, it was like he already knew he was off to go get something," she said. "He walked straight past the first one and grabbed that yellow one."

Ms Jackson admitted she had expected the footage to show someone acting erratically or under the influence of alcohol — not what appeared to be a couple on a casual evening walk.

"It was really shocking, and you kind of don't think of your plants getting stolen, to be honest," she said.

The theft was not discovered until around 8.30am on Friday, when Harry immediately noticed that his favourite pot was missing from its spot among the others.

Theft highlights growing concern about property crime in Victoria

The incident comes against a backdrop of heightened concern about property crime across Victoria, spanning opportunistic theft, burglaries, and car theft. While the scale of this particular crime is small, the callousness of targeting a young child's garden project — spotted, scoped out, and stolen within hours of being planted — has struck a nerve.

Ms Jackson's frustration was plain. "They didn't even ask," she said, capturing the sheer audacity of walking onto a family's property and taking something so personally meaningful.

For Harry, the yellow flowers he had so carefully chosen and planted with his mum were more than just a pot plant — they were, in his own small way, his project, his garden, and his pride. As of Friday morning, one gap remained where seven pots had stood the night before.