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| Photo Credit: Pennystone Gardens |
| Hungry deer will eat almost everything down to their roots if they’re hungry enough! |
Yes, deer are beautiful creatures, but the hushed reverence many folks express when they see deer in their back yards quickly evaporates when the first few expensive shrubs are chewed to bits! And when a lot of deer are hanging around, protecting your garden is a lot like trying to protect a sand castle against a tsunami.
Like just about everyone who’s ever encountered “The Deer Problem,” I started with long lists of “deer resistant” plants, graduated to “deer repellant” concoctions, then briefly considered paving the entire yard with asphalt. Instead of reaching that final point, I bought a bunch of 8-foot metal posts and a lot of fencing. | Add Photo to Journal |  | | Photo Credit: Pennystone Gardens | | The right deer fence will keep four-legged feasters out of your garden year-round. |
Our first fence was “deer netting” or a “deer barrier.” It was a very thin, netlike material that was inexpensive and somewhat tricky to handle because it tangled so easily on itself. Unfortunately, the deer didn’t have as much difficulty with it as we did – they broke right through.
Next came a heavier polypropylene deer fence: 2- by 4-inch black mesh that reached 7 feet high and easily attached to fence posts and trees. Unfortunately, the mesh got a bit limp at the top, and when it drooped, the deer could easily jump over it. So we laced the top with plastic-coated steel wire to keep it taut. Then we discovered deer were literally chewing holes in the fencing – “unzipping” it to sneak right in. In fact, they were so smart, that they did their dirty work in spots that had brush cover. So we got rid of the brush and small trees, but with no real improvement. (It wasn’t much deterrence to groundhogs, rabbits or bears either.)
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| Warnings |
- Don’t hang bird feeders inside a fenced area if bears are in your area. They’ll destroy a fence (and all your hard work with it) to get to a bird feeder – especially in the early spring when they come out of hibernation and are really hungry.
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| Facts |
- Sure, Bambi may be charming and evoke sympathy, but whatever you do, don’t feed the deer in winter! This just encourages them to hang around in the summer and eat up all your shrubbery. The herd will grow larger because of the safety your neighborhood can provide, and then a rough winter will come along and they’ll all suffer.
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| Tips |
- Deer do ignore some plants. Grasses, milkweed, thistles and both hayscented and bracken ferns top a very short list. I’m told Lindera benzoin is on that list, too, but I haven’t had the nerve to gamble a $15 shrub to find out. Even if you use one of these plants, you’ve got to remember one thing: Hungry deer will eat anything!
- To landscape outside of a deer fence, turn to imaginative uses of decorative grasses. Deer may munch on them if they’re hungry, but they won’t decimate them like they do other plants. (Plus, native grasses can be used in some astonishing ways.)
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| Faqs |
- Q: What’s the best deer fencing?
A: By far the best fencing I’ve discovered, which I’ll use next if we need it, is “wild game” fencing – 8 feet tall and made from high-tensile galvanized wire. The mesh is large at the top but smaller at the bottom to discourage groundhogs and rabbits, and because of its design, fence posts can be 20-25 feet apart. The downside is that it comes in 330-foot rolls, weighing 350 pounds each; the upside is that it’s around 67 cents a foot!
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