Skip to main content
Portland city officials have installed a fence encircling the Lan Su Chinese Garden following multiple acts of vandalism in recent weeks, its executive director Elizabeth Nye said in an email to members earlier this afternoon.
“This is a temporary solution in a time of challenge, which will provide a deterrent against damage and protect garden structures,” Nye wrote.
Nye wrote that she’d reported the vandalism incidents as bias crimes. She described the vandalism as “targeted” and wrote that the “costs incurred are substantial,” but it’s not clear what exactly happened. A Portland Police Bureau spokesman said he was unaware of any recent incidents, and representatives for the garden did not immediately respond to WW’s requests for comment.
“While we are exploring options,” Nye wrote, “the immediate solution offered was to build a chain-link fence around the perimeter of Lan Su. Late Thursday afternoon, the city of Portland began the process of erecting that fence around two-thirds of the surrounding sidewalk.”
The garden, one of Portland’s iconic attractions, is located in one of the city’s most conspicuously blighted neighborhoods, one where the entwined crises of homelessness, drug addiction and untreated mental illness are on full display. That juxtaposition has not been easy for Lan Su. Last summer, Nye reported the garden had been a victim of a bias crime after someone smashed a window with a chunk of concrete.
By Friday evening, the chainlink fence girdled the garden’s west, north and east sides.