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Garden, Plants

HOW TO BUY PLANTS THE DEER WON’T EAT

May 3, 2017

One the biggest challenges gardeners face, particularly in certain parts of the country including the Midwest, is wildlife damage. It is soul crushing when you go to your formerly beautiful garden to find plants mowed down overnight by deer.

The deer in our neighborhood are so bold they basically give you the stink eye if you interrupt their meal.

There are ways to prevent damage in the first place, and the best, and perhaps only, truly proven method is a tall, sturdy deer fence. But that’s not practical for a lot of people, so we’re left employing various deterrent sprays and homegrown methods to keep the buggers away. Regardless of what method you choose—be it homemade or purchased spray, soap, water sprays, large dogs or maybe water gun—growing deer resistant plants goes a long way toward decreasing the damage.

I say “decreasing” because deer don’t read plant labels very well and they’ve been known to nibble (or worse) on plants that they aren’t supposed to like. A lot of that has to do with how much other food there is, but with deer populations increasing, they seem to be more than happy to pull up to the buffet we provide in our yards.

There’s a reason all the cedar trees in our yard don’t have any foliage below about 7 feet. They are like crack to deer.

Our house is a quarter-mile from a state park that is full of deer. Combine that with the rural terrain and it’s safe to say we have a very healthy and large deer population in our neighborhood. When we first bought our house 15 years ago, we’d see groups of three or four deer standing around. Now when they come, there can be dozens. So I’ve gone through the ringer with figuring out which plants they like and which they’ll avoid.

I’ll offer some specific plants suggestions in additional posts, but there are a few characteristics common in plants that deer avoid.

1. PLANTS WITH SCENT

I’m using “scent” instead of “frangrance” not because it’s necessarily a bad smell, but because deer can  and certainly do enjoy plenty of plants with fragrant blooms, including roses (apparently they don’t care about thorns). But plants that have a distinct scent when you crush the leaves seem to be unappetizing to deer. Monarda, nepeta, most herbs, and anything in the onion family, such as chives and ornamental alliums, are off the Bambi menu.

2. TEXTURED LEAVES

Deer don’t seem to be fans of textured leaves. Fuzzy leaves, such as you find on lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantina) are a no go, but even crinkly-leafed plants fair well around our resident deer. This can include, believe it or not, very thick-leaved crinkly blue hostas, which also happen to be the same hostas that the slugs avoid. Ferns also fall into this category.

3. MOST SPRING EPHEMERALS

I tend to think of spring ephemerals—those plants that disappear and go dormant after they do their thing in spring—as woodland plants, although not all are. For whatever reason such plants seem to avoid the wrath of deer. Bleeding hearts and epimediums come to mind, but there are others, including trillium, but not all trillium. The trilliums that are not native to my area have been tested by deer. They don’t seem to like them, but it’s almost as though they recognize as different from the native trilliums and can’t resist (and then seem to say to their friend, “Ew. Oh my gosh, this is so gross. Taste it!”). I can’t explain why deer don’t like these, but I tend to think, especially in the case of native woodland plants, that we wouldn’t have them around if deer liked to eat them, so they are pretty safe to plant.

4. GRASSES

This one flummoxes me as well. If you’ve ever watched a deer eat, perhaps as you sat there paralyzed with horror as you watch it eat your enormous hosta, you’ll notice the whole process is reminiscent of how horses eat. And horses eat grass. But for whatever reason, deer avoid ornamental grasses. Sometimes it’s better not to question things and just go with it.

5. POISONOUS PLANTS

No one has ever given deer credit for being particularly intelligent creatures—although I swear to you the deer in the state park look both ways before they cross the road—but they know when a plant is going to make them really sick. Anything poisonous, including monkshood (Aconitum), castor bean (Ricinus) and daffodils, is pretty much guaranteed to be safe from deer browsing.

Deer are finicky and nothing is certain when it comes to what they will eat if they are very hungry or very lazy, but these characteristics are a good starting place to know what they’ll probably avoid.

It’s all well and good until they do this.

deer plants
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
8 Comments

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Comments

  1. Lisa Greenbow says: May 3, 2017 at 9:23 pm

    Astute observations. This should help someone with deer problems. Now, do you have any rabbit advise?

    Reply
    • Erin Schanen says: May 3, 2017 at 9:41 pm

      Knock on wood, but since we got a rather healthy fox population going in our neighborhood we haven't dealt with too many rabbit problems. However, in my experience, they tend to have the same tastes in plants as deer, so a lot of the same plant characteristics would hold true. Except closer to the ground. 🙂

      Reply
  2. LINDA from Each Little World says: May 3, 2017 at 10:25 pm

    Those two deer at our house were too scary, so I hate to think about your issues. You could do fencing like Margaret Roach but I am gussing it's a major expense. Wish we could just garden!

    Reply
    • Erin Schanen says: May 5, 2017 at 5:03 pm

      It's not just the expense, I still don't know how you'd deal with the driveway, short of ripping up the end of it and installing those cattle grate things, but gosh, what a way to make your yard look like a maximum security prison.

      Reply
  3. Evelyn says: May 4, 2017 at 1:48 pm

    Japanese anemones will do well in shady places, bloom in the late summer, and, I think, are avoided by deer. Several hours of full sun makes this plant very aggressive, so choose your spot carefully. They are quite spectacular when in bloom.

    Reply
    • Erin Schanen says: May 5, 2017 at 5:04 pm

      Excellent suggestion. I have a few and you're right, the deer don't bother them!

      Reply
  4. Unknown says: May 5, 2017 at 4:26 pm

    Using a grater with a bar of Irish Spring soap seems to work fairly well around the garden.

    Reply
    • Erin Schanen says: May 5, 2017 at 5:04 pm

      I always wondered if that work.

      Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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Erin Schanen 🌿 The Impatient Gardener
Three years ago I planted 10 ‘Royal Raindrops’ Three years ago I planted 10 ‘Royal Raindrops’ crabapple whips and then (after a gin) cut them all off about 16 inches from the ground. And so began the training of the espalier Belgian fence (no, I don’t know why it’s called that, it’s just what that form of espalier is called). It is blooming fabulously this year and in need of a few more extensions of the framework to help guide the branches but I’m thrilled with the progress it has made in a relatively short time. Video update coming soon but I didn’t want to miss showing the blooms.
I still believe that the biggest game changer in a I still believe that the biggest game changer in a garden and the single best way to make a less-than-perfect garden look amazing is a fresh edge. Weeds? Who cares. Bare spots? Nobody will know. A fresh edge tidies even the most disheveled garden right up. And even though I have a ton of planting to do, I spent a good amount of time today working on edges because it’s just that good. I use my @troybilt gas edger to cut the edge and follow up with the @sneeboer half moon edger. By the way, I’d give up my lawn mower before I gave up that gas edger. I didn’t get all the beds done but I did do the ones I see the most from the house so I can stare out the window and just think, “Damn, that looks good.”
Great diagonals courtesy of Polygonatum (Solomon’s seal) in the shade garden. Athyrium niponicum (Japanese painted fern) and ‘Dawn’s Early Light’ playing rare backup roles as the Polygonatum is allowed to have its moment in the sun … er … shade.
I love the small flowers of Epimedium. I’m grate I love the small flowers of Epimedium. I’m grateful that they bloom early in the season because their delicate blooms would probably be overlooked if they bloomed later when they would have to compete with big, brash, attention-demanding flowers in the summer garden. They are great for dry shade but they really need moisture to get established before they will get on with things.
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