Deer-resistant plants
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- March
- 16
One of the best ways to keep deer from damaging your landscaping is to plant things they don’t like. What a herd in Mount Kisco likes may be different from the tastes of deer in Rye, but it’s worth trying a few of the shrubs and perennials on the lists of deer-resistant plants.
Here are three plants I like:
Meet Joe-pye weed, a tall native perennial that comes into flower in August, when not much else is in bloom. Monarch butterflies adore this guy.
Russian sage is another great plant that deer won’t bother. Like other herbs, it has a strong smell that deer find distasteful. What a color, too!
Here’s a another winner. This one is called tansy. It’s a natural bug repellent, too. Try planting it near the house to keep insects away. The small yellow flowers appear at the top of tall stems (the down side is that they need to be staked).
Of course, all bets are off in the middle of a snowstorm, when deer will browse on just about anything to fill their bellies.
This entry was posted
on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 12:33 pm by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
tell me how to keep my grapes from rotting and you are da man!
i have2rows 86 feet long. ihave yet to have a year where they dont go green to raisin ..
Hi Steve. I didn’t know you were a gardener. I don’t know much about growing grapes, but I know 2 people who do: Susan Henry, who has several grape arbors in her Waccabuc garden, and Tony Russo, who has a small table grape demo garden at the Hartsbrook preserve in Harstdale. I have emailed both of them.
not a real gardener per se’ the vines came with the property so i tried to keep them going. I like green etc.
Thanx for the emails.
Love your articles Bill.
Well MY deer (4 of them in Armonk) adore Joe Pye weed. The good thing about that native plant, however, is that munching by deer serves to promote branching, so by Fall I have a rather fat Joe, more like a rotund Little Joe Pye. Not the look I wanted, but hey, they did not eat the whole thing to the ground. This is true of rudbekia hirta, which seems to be nibbled on in Spring, then ignored, which makes for multi-branching black eyed Susans.
I think my favorite deer resistant is geranium. They are so easy to grow. A number of mine only get a few hours of sun and still bloom like crazy. Not fussy about soil, can be mowed, chewed, etc. and they come back beautifully. A few even have great fall colors on the leaves. I think these are so underused. I’m talking about the perennial geraniums of course, but the annual pelargoniums are really starting to come into their own too with all the hybridizing.
Barbara, a friend had advised me to cut back on plants that I didn’t want to stake (with some exceptions) and it’s 1 of the best tips I ever got. Here in northern Putnam, I couldn’t even get a stake into the ground more than a few inches.
Nice thread, Bill
Yes, the deer “trim” my asters for me. They don’t take them to the ground, just nibble them in spring and again in July so that it almost looks like a deliberate layered look by the time they bloom in fall.
Geraniums are great. I’ve always been a big fan of simple pots of bright red geraniums (the annual kind) and I’m just discovering the perennial ones. The Ladies Border at the NY Botanical Garden has some wonderful ones that flop around in all directions and mix in with the other perennials.
some beagle bark also helps. ;-]
Bill, I’m not such a fan of the floppies, but ‘John Elsey’, ‘New Hampshire Purple’, ‘Biokovo’, ‘Laurence Flatman’and macrorrhizum (easy, fall color, shade or sun) are great. I can’t remember which one I have next to the dwarf barberry, but what a great combo. Bright pink/purple flowers really pop but are toned down just enough.
I’m volunteering with the local fire department to come up with a low maintenance, deer resistant landscape and thinking of using mostly shrubs with different foliage colors. My thought is that even if the flowers get eaten, perhaps the leaves will be enough.
So—anyone experience deer preference with spiraeas? Or weigelas? Suggestions would be great too.
Harriett,
I’ve had good luck with spiraes and the one weigela I have has never been browsed. I’ve heard from other gardeners that the deer may nibble at these two but never take them down to the ground.
I’ve also done well with andromeda, ink berry and leucothoe.
Which Fire Department? I would love to come see it when you’ve got it in the ground.
Kent Volunteer FD on Route 301. I’ve been inquiring of friends for donations and it depends on their budget ($0 sounds about right). Hmmm, they have many rocks so maybe leucothoe would work there in a microclimate. Of course, I will let you know when it’s done.
i live in New Rochelle sans deer so am a bit puzzled. don’t deer eat foliage too? I agree about the spirea – my friends with deer claim they loathe it.