
You Can Have a Beautiful Perennial Garden Even if You Have Deer!
Shop for Deer Resistant Plants
Without a doubt one of the most common questions we get at Stargazer Perennials, the farm of Farm Fresh Living, is “What can I grow that the deer won’t eat?”. Unfortunately the answer to that is “Not very much!”. When deer pressure is high they will browse just about anything. However, there are some effective gardening and design strategies and quite a wide variety of plants that we have proven to be “bulletproof” in a deer country garden. Remember, there are no “deer proof” plants. However, you can enjoy a highly deer resistant landscape using a combination of smart gardening practices and the right plants even in areas of very high deer pressure.
Strategy #1: Don’t grow the plants that you like; Grow the plants that deer don’t like! This probably sounds like common sense, but you’d be surprised at the number of gardeners who decide that they just have to have a certain plant and go shopping for it without doing their research. There is also the impulse buy: Go to the local big box store for groceries and come home with a carload of beautiful flowers. Both the “impulse” and the “must have” plants go into the ground and the next morning they are in the digestive tract of a deer. To sum it up: Stop buying pretty flowers, make a plan, and stick to it!
plant with Tier 1 plants: Plants with deer resistance. Don’t mix in other non-resistant plants in the hopes that the resistant varieties will protect them. As deer browse the plants they like they’ll also browse nearby plants, and may develop a taste for ones that were previously resistant. As your gardens mature and the deer lose interest in the plantings then you can begin mixing in Tier 2 type plants: Those that are only minimally browsed, or ones that can sustain some browsing without affecting their garden performance.
Using these methods will promote plant health, increase deer resistance and, as a bonus, will naturally prevent outbreaks of insect pests which tend to multiply rapidly on unnaturally lush green new growth initiated by over-watering and over-fertilization.
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