Deer are not a gardener’s friend. They look peaceful when they wander into your yard, but they have darkness in their hearts. Well, at least concerning your hydrangeas, tulips, peppers, and fruit trees. Gardeners in deer-prone areas who don’t make a plan to deal with the deer have made a plan to feed the deer.

While deer are capable of devastating young trees, shrubs, perennials, and even vegetable patches, it isn’t always the deer. Sometimes, it’s those darn rabbits. Deer browse-damaged stems look torn or chewed. If you were to cut through the twig with a butter knife, sawing it off, it would look like deer browse. 

Rabbits, besides not being able to reach as high, have sharp little teeth, and their damage looks very clean, as if cut with scissors. They’ll also gnaw the bark off young trees and shrubs at ground level.

Some remedies for deer, like fencing, are also effective for rabbits, depending on the size of the holes in the material. If you have trouble with both, like I do, roll up your sleeves. 

Tall fences

While expensive and not practical for all gardeners, tall fencing is the final word in deer protection, trusted by market gardeners, orchard owners, and even deer farmers (to keep them in). 

Deer fencing needs to be tall, because they can jump higher than you’d think. An eight-foot-tall fence is the common recommendation; however, I’ve been using seven-foot-tall fences for years with no sign of deer jumping over. While a deer can jump it, they must be too lazy to bother. I have had a few deer crash through it when spooked.

Deer fencing can be heavy-duty plastic mesh or more traditional and expensive welded or woven wire. You’ll also need fence posts longer than normally found at big box stores, to allow for a couple of feet of post in the ground plus enough to hold up the fence material. My fence is only seven feet tall because the metal posts I can buy are only eight feet. The wooden corner and midspan support posts do the heavy lifting and are farther into the ground. The metal posts are located approximately every ten feet and are primarily used to hold the fence up and in line. 

Plastic mesh is easier to install and can be less visible, but it is not as strong. I’ve had spooked deer manage to break a hole in it, and rabbits can often chew through along the bottom creating a weak spot for deer to exploit. However, it is good enough to offer protection most of the time. I typically only have about one issue per year, despite having a lot of deer pressure. It won’t last as long as metal fencing, but you can put up two hundred feet of it as fast as you can zip tie it to the posts.

Metal fencing is heavy, expensive, but durable, and the deer won’t break it down to get to your sweet corn. It is more visible, which can be important if you don’t want to be looking at a fence all the time, but after a while, you stop noticing it. If you’ve got to have protection no matter what, 8-foot-tall metal fencing is the way.

Grade: metal fencing A+, heavy duty plastic fencing A-

Fencing individual plants

If you don’t have a huge garden, but need to protect an apple tree or a few hydrangeas, individual cages can work well. Like a cloche, except made from wire or fencing, they protect plants from nibbling, browsing, and importantly, from being damaged by a buck rubbing its antlers on your young tree. 

Fencing individual plants means cutting small sections of metal fencing (plastic is too flimsy), forming it into a cylinder around your tree or shrub, and fastening it to one or more metal fence posts. 

For materials, I find that chicken wire works fine for smaller shrubs, but for young trees and larger shrubs, welded wire fencing is a better option. Chicken wire is more malleable, and will need several posts. One stout metal fencepost can hold a circle of welded wire in place. Welded wire is more resistant to a deer pushing and bumping, trying to get at those tasty leaves.

Grade: welded wire cloches, A+, chicken wire gets a B+

Deer repellent sprays

Despite the marketing hype, deer repellent sprays are hit or miss, mostly miss. They work well in low deer pressure areas and are a good choice for protecting a few plants in a suburban yard, but fail to protect larger areas or those with heavier deer populations. 

Repellent sprays work by smelling bad to the deer, and since we are both mammals, they smell bad to us too. Most need to be reapplied after a couple of weeks or after a heavy rain, and it can be a messy job to mix it up and apply it. Diligence is the name of the game with repellent sprays. If you’re away on vacation and it rains, or you forget for a week or two, you’ll find damaged plants.

Grade: B-

Motion-activated sprinklers and lights

In my experience, motion-activated lights are only good for waking up yourself and the neighbors. They work for a short time, sometimes only a day or two, and then the deer figure it out. 

Motion-activated high-pressure sprinklers are much more fun and can be effective. Basically, the motion detector sensor is coupled to your garden hose and a high-pressure nozzle. When the deer comes too close, the valve on the device opens, and the nozzle sprays a strong jet of water over the area, making noise and hosing down the deer. The videos online are hilarious. Of course, they also seem to get the delivery driver, the neighbor, and the homeowner who forgets and walks through the backyard while the device is on.

Grade: lights get a D-, sprinklers earn a C+ 

Small exclusion areas and Double fences

Deer can jump, but biologists think their depth perception isn’t so great. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed deer prefer not to jump into a fenced area less than about 10 feet by 10 feet. It’s such a commonly observed behavior that foresters use these small plots to protect an area that is regenerating young trees, so they can measure the difference between a browsed area and a protected area. If you only need a small area protected, you can get away with a shorter fence as long as it doesn’t exceed the above size.

Grade: A-

Fishing line 

People have been trying to outsmart the deer for a long time, and many gardeners have tried stringing fishing line. It works sporadically and usually causes a ruckus, especially when you forget it’s there while mowing the yard. The idea is to use a strong, clear fishing line and string it across gaps in a fence or around plants to provide protection. The deer, so goes the theory, can’t see the line very well and bump into it, then freak out and leave. Some people add a little bell hanging from the line to make noise. 

For infrequent deer problems, this may work, but in areas with heavier deer pressure, I’ve seen deer simply figure out how to go around, under, or over. Or they just break it. The bell may also drive you nuts jingling at two in the morning, or at 4:30 AM when the song sparrow decides to sit on the fishing line. 

Grade: D

Choosing deer-resistant species of plants

While it sounds like a no-brainer, many plants are less palatable to deer. Just like we have food likes and dislikes, deer also prefer some plants to others. But, while I’ll normally pass on boiled beets or calamari, eventually if I get hungry enough, down it goes and the same thing is true with the deer.

Unfortunately, most of our veggie plants are quite tasty to deer. However, in the flower and shrub world, many plants, such as daffodils, peonies, spruce trees and shrubs, marigolds, many culinary herbs, catmint, alliums, ferns, lavender, bee balm, and Russian sage, are quite deer-resistant. 

Plants which deer eat like candy include tulips, most vegetable plants, apple trees (all fruit trees), lilacs, hostas, roses, young shade trees like oaks and maples, pansies, hydrangeas, and young sunflowers. The list is endless.

Grade: B+

Things that don’t work

Over the years, I’ve heard of (and tried) many different methods that either didn’t work or only worked for a brief moment. From dog hair to hanging bars of scented soap, none of these things worked more than a night or two, if at all.

Pet feces

Human hair

Dog or cat hair

Hanging bars of soap

Playing music

Scarecrows

Windchimes

Human urine

Holographic ribbon

Hanging old CDs

Hot pepper powders