Oh dear, the deer are coming!

White tail deer.
Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service -
Stehn, John

I wasn’t used to garden with the pleasure of deer visiting my garden. In Germany I lived in an area full of deer, but those deer were shy, ran away whenever the got the scent of men in their nose and didn’t approached the village I lived in. They knew better. Maybe thousands of years of experiences of being hunted, was passed on from generation to generation and they knew it is a matter of life and death to avoid contact with people.
But here, I met a complete different variety of deer. For the first time I had the opportunity to admire these beautiful animals. Here with their big bold eyes, they stand still, stare at you and ask what you are doing in their territory. It is only a short time ago, that men started building houses in their area and actually I don’t blame the deer.

I am still lucky. They walk regularly on our property along the seasonal stream at the edge of our gated garden, but never entered the planted part of the garden. Till one beautiful spring morning in April, I was just admiring the fast growing roses, when I saw the brute damage on the plants and the traces of their hooves and realized that the deer discovered my gated garden.
Yes indeed, they only touched the roses, the ultimate sweets for deer. They can smell them from miles away. They are attracted to the new fresh buds as chocolate lovers to chocolate. Nearly all the roses where eaten. Some, situated near the gate, mowed off to the ground. Others a bit further away gently nipped off the most tender parts. I was devastated. What to do?

Sprinklers.
I started asking around and googling on internet. What works and what doesn’t. I read about water sprinklers that go off, when deer trigger moving sensors. Sounds like a nice idea, but it seems that deer get used to them and can’t be bothered with the sprinklers after a while. Who blames them in our hot summers? A free cool shower!

Spraying.
At Turtle Bay they have more success. Plants which attract deer are sprayed with a liquid, that the smells terrible to these hungry animals. It forms a kind of liquid deer defense which can be bought or simple made yourselves. It works, deer don’t like smelly plants and that’s why lots of sages, lavenders and rosemary outside our gated garden, around our parking lot, are left alone. But many volunteers at Turtle Bay told me, deer a curious and stupid. They quite often taste plants and just spit them out if they don’t like them, leaving a ruined plant behind. It is also less effective method in the rainy season. The liquid defense will simple wash away any time it rains and leaving your plants unprotected.

A deer jumping a fence
Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service - White, Phillip K.

Deer fence.
The best protection for the garden seems to be a fence. My flower garden was already fenced. Not specific for deer, but the backyard was fenced, by the former owners, for their above ground swimming pool, and I personally placed a 3 feet high fence around the front yard to keep my small dog inside the garden. What was wrong with these fences that the deer just ignored them and started feasting in my garden?
On www.invisible-deer-fence.com I found a helpful explanation of the habits of deer. First, some deer, especially white tail deer, can easily jump over 9 foot fences and sometimes even higher ones. Not knowing what kind of deer lives in our neighborhood, I decided it would be better to opt for a 10 foot barrier. Secondly, deer do have notoriously bad eyesight. They are afraid to jump if they can’t judge the height of a fence. By erecting special, hardly visible deer netting you catch two flies in one go. The deer won’t dare to jump and the fence doesn’t block your view.
Did that mean that I had to place this deer fence around the whole garden? Again the psychology of deer gave here some handy clues. Deer don’t like to jump when they can't see a clear landing spot. Where bushes or high plants are growing along the boundary, deer won’t jump. These silly animals even don’t dare to jump under trees with low reaching branches. They also have a habit to walk every time the same routes, so approach the garden always from the same paths. I knew they always walk on our property along the seasonal stream and never on the other side of the garden. We were lucky. Our garden had never been on daily menu, so they were not yet tempted to approach the garden from another side. You can image, that it was important to keep it that way and place the fence, where necessary, as soon as possible.
After carefully inspection of the garden vegetation and deer walking habits it seemed that we only needed the special high deer fence in the front yard along the road. A week later, my dear husband erected a 10 feet high fence with special high quality deer netting and the deer never came back again.

Deer resistant plants.
One lesson I learned. If you don't want or can't erect a deer fence, don't plant roses. Having said that, you will be surprised to find out how many plants are actually deer resistant. Not only deer dislike many fragrant plants, but they also aren't fond of plants with woolly leaves. Nancy from Lakehead gives on her garden page a list of plants that survived in this densely populated deer area. You can also look at the list of plants that grow outside my gated flower garden on our property. Deer may sometimes nibble at them, but they survived. Besides that on many other internet sites or in garden books, you will find lists of ‘deer safe’ plants.
Whatever you plant, keep in mind that deer (maybe like people?) still are stupid animals and no plant will escape their curiosity.

Barbara Kapsenberg

These are my experiences with deer. Maybe you have other experiences. I would be very thankful if you would like to take the effort to add your story or remarks. Please be welcome to use the comment form to send me your comments and I will place them here.

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