I like being nice and leaving random items around for anyone who happens to stroll through my garden
However you can almost gaurantee that if you leave a nice pile of items one person is likely to take all you've left.
If we had some sort of box furniture like the storage boxes that would dispense one of the items inside it every so often, depending on when you set it to drop... so Half Hourly or Hourly, and can tell if the item it dropped has been taken