Protecting Your Plants From Deer

White tailed deer are one of the most recognizable wild animals in North Carolina.  Whether it’s a mature buck with spreading antlers or a graceful doe and her spotted fawn, deer are a beautiful addition to the landscape.  Unfortunately they can also be a significant pest for gardeners.  Deer can wreak havoc on a flower bed or small tree in a matter of a night or two.  In suburban areas where hunting is not allowed, deer pressure can make gardening frustrating if not down right impossible.  Luckily, there are some steps that we gardeners can take to minimize the amount of damage deer do. 

Deer can jump over tall fences and slip through small spaces so excluding them from the garden can be challenging.  A combination of plant selection, zoning and repellents can help you garden successfully despite the deer. 

Before planting, determine what plants are favorites for deer.  Deer prefer to eat some plants over others.  In general, deer prefer not to eat plants with thorny or prickly leaves or stems.  So spiny plants like Japanese barberries and yucca are less palatable to deer than more tender plants like pear trees and daylilies.  This rule does not extend to roses though – roses are a tasty treat for deer. 

Deer do not prefer plants with strong scents and pungent tastes such as rosemary, sage, oregano and thyme.  Herb gardens can be quite attractive, useful in the kitchen and deer resistant.  Many of the ornamental salvias are pretty and deer resistant as well.   

Plants with hairy leaves are not preferred by deer.  This makes the fuzzy, gray-green leaves of lamb’s ear (Stachys byzantine) and dusty miller (Senecio cineraria) a perfect addition to the flower border. 

Another deer resistant choices is palm trees.  Make sure you choose a palm that is hardy in our area.  Windmill, jelly and cabbage palms form options while dwarf palmetto, needle palm, saw palmetto and Mediterranean fan palm are shrub forming palms that will grow in our area.  

Since deer feed primarily by browsing – nipping the twigs and buds off of shrubs and bushed – ornamental grasses are typically unaffected by deer.  There are lots of different types of ornamental grasses available.  Two of my personal favorites are pink muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) and selections of panic grass (Panicum virgatum).  Ornamental grasses make a nice contrast to shrubs and can be planted singly or in a mass as a ground cover. 

Ferns are another deer resistant choice.  Deer rarely browse fern foliage so ferns are a good addition to shaded, moist locations in deer country.  Consider Autumn fern, Christmas fern or Florida shield fern for evergreen choices.  Japanese painted fern and the native cinnamon fern are beautiful deciduous options. 

While no plant is deer proof, planting deer resistant plants can help encourage deer to move on to other, more inviting meals. 

Deer pressure varies depending on the season and location.  Feeding is usually heaviest in the spring, when new growth is starting and deer are hungry from a long, cold winter.  It can be beneficial, although time consuming, to protect particularly vulnerable plants with a deer repellent during this time.  Look for a formulation containing albumin or egg whites and reapply after rain events. 

In areas with large deer populations and little food, even relatively deer resistant plants may be eaten.   

If you want to grow a plant that is a favorite treat for deer – such as daylilies, hosta or roses – plant them closer to the house where they are easier to protect and where deer pressure is usually lower.

For more information on protecting your garden from deer, including detailed lists of which plants are more or less likely to be damaged by deer, check out this publication: http://carteret.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Deer-Resistant-Plants2.pdf.  
This information can help you can reduce the amount of deer damage in your garden next spring.   

Beautiful Container Gardens

Nothing adds color and beauty to your patio or porch like a beautiful container garden.  Don’t be intimidated by the containers you see at the garden center, you can put your own combination together with your personal spin and often for a whole lot less money! 

First, select your container.   You are limited only by your imagination.  Choose a container that appeals to you, just make sure it has adequate drainage.  If you love a container that doesn’t have drainage holes, use a power drill to add one or more holes to the bottom.

Once you have your container, fill it with a high quality potting mix.  If the potting mix contains a slow release fertilizer, you are ready to go.  If it does not, mix a slow release fertilizer in before planting.  Slow release formulations provide nutrients over an extended period of time.  Read the bag or container label and be prepared to provide additional fertilizer later in the season once the slow release is expended. 

Now it is time to add your plants.  The number of plants that you need depends on the size of your container.  If you start with plants in four inch cups, a good rule of thumb is that 3-4 plants will fill a 10 or 12-inch planter while 4-6 plants will fill a 14 to 16-inch planter.  These planters will not look full all at once, but will start to fill out after 2-3 weeks of growth.  These numbers are a great place to start but can be adjusted up or down based on the plant being grown.  Vigorous sprawling plants like petunias will not require as many plants to fill a pot while slow-growing, upright plants like pansies can be planted more closely to make the pot appear more lush.  If you start with smaller plants (say 6-count cell packs) you can add a couple of additional plants for each container. 

You can fill your container with just one type of plant – say a bowl full of petunias or calibrachoa – or you choose a variety of plants for the container.  This is probably the easiest place to start.  Sometimes I chose the same variety, often I will plant one big container of pink petunias.  Other times, I will mix several varieties of the same plant – three or more coleus can make a stunning combination in the same container.   

If you want to mix plants, a classic technique is to choose a “thriller”, a “filler” and a “spiller”.  The thriller is an upright plant with dramatic structure and foliage for the center or back of the container.  Fun thriller choices include spikes, cordyline, dwarf cannas, dragonwing begonias, ornamental peppers or sun coleus.  Ornamental grasses like red fountain grass are another great accent plant.  A filler is a more mounding plant that will fill in the center of the container.  Fillers could include smaller coleus, mounding petunias, or geraniums.  The spiller then cascades down the side of the pot, look for trailing forms of verbena, bacopa or calibrachoa.  

Choose plants for their blooms but also for the texture or color of their foliage.  When mixing plants together, look for a variety of growth habits, leaf and flower forms.  So some may be large and leathery, others small and wispy, maybe another with silvery-blue foliage.  This adds interest and variety to the container.  If you are just getting started, use plants with the same color blooms – say all pink or shades of yellow – or one color plus white.  These monochromatic color schemes are easy to achieve.  As you become more confident, play with analogous colors like yellow, orange and red.  The boldest color combinations rely on complimentary colors like orange and blue or yellow and violet.  These combinations will really pop, adding lots of energy to the arrangement.  You can add a neutral like white or a pale creamy yellow to almost any pot.      

I like to combine plants on my cart when I’m at the garden center.  I’ll put different plants next to each other and play with the combination of flowers, form and foliage until I find a combination that appeals to me.  This works well, just make sure your chosen plants have the same growing preferences – sun versus shade and moist versus dry soil conditions.  Otherwise, they will not be happy growing in the same pot together.    

Here are some classic container garden combinations.  When you visit the garden center, you will notice that many planters are a combination of petunias, calibrachoa (“million bells”) and verbena.  This combination works well with a combination of large, medium and small flowers.  Play with bloom colors and consider adding a sun coleus, salvia or ornamental grass for height in the center of the container.  If you want something a little bit different, trade out the verbena for bacopa, a trailing variety of lantana, euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’ or sweet potato vine.  These planters do well in a full sun location.  For a shady spot, consider begonia, New Guinea impatiens and torenia (wishbone flower).  Sweet potato vine and coleus perform in shaded locations as well.     

Sun	Sun	Sun	Shade	Shade
Petunias	Coleus	Salvia	Begonia	Begonia
Calibrachoa	Calibrachoa or petunia	Calibrachoa	Coleus	New Guinea Impatiens
Verbena or bacopa	Sweet potato vine	Lantana or verbena	Torenia (wishbone flower)	Sweet potato vine

Once you have selected your plants, arrange them in the container together.  Tease apart any overgrown root balls and work potting mix gently between the plants.  Make sure that there is at least an inch of room between the surface of the potting mix and the top rim of the pot when you are done.  You need this room for watering.  If the surface of the potting mix is too high, water will just run off the top of the pot rather than infiltrating in to the potting mix. 

Water gently to settle the potting mix around your plants and then sit back and enjoy.  In two or three weeks, your container will fill in and look just as lush and gorgeous as any from the garden center.  With a little bit of pinching and deadheading, you can have a beautiful container garden all summer long.