Landscaping to repel deer and rodents

Published 10:16 pm Tuesday, December 4, 2007

By Staff
Part two
I have been doing a lot of research lately on four-legged garden pests.
Ever since my niece, Jamie Darrigan, late one night on her way home saw a very large doe and fawn in my front yard nibbling on my prize Alba Semi-plena rose bush.
She stopped and beeped the horn. They promptly ran across the street. With hooves just a-clattering as they ran in between two homes, they skedaddled into the darkness.
Never in a million years would I have ever thought I would ever have to worry about deer, living in the city as I do.
But there are no predators large enough to keep their growing numbers in check, except for a dwindling number of hunters and our cars.
We have lots of deer out there. Too many, in fact. The latest number I have run across is between 15 million and 25 million deer here in North America.
I got these numbers from a 1999 book called "Outwitting Deer" by Bill Adler Jr.
According to Mr. Adler, the facts are the facts and no matter how much we hope, wish and pray otherwise, there is ALMOST nothing we can do about the damage (not only do they browse and nibble along the way, but they are also trampling everything as they go, too) to our gardens.
But we can do a little psychological warfare on these creatures.
As Mr. Adler points out, we have to look at the world and our gardens from a deer's point of view and think like a deer.
Wander around your yard as if you were a deer. Never mind what the neighbors think. This is war!
To prevent garden raids, we must have a plan, a deliberate, calculated strategy that involves using plants that contain natural chemicals.
Two, to create a scent barrier.
And three, to camouflage our gardens by planting deterrents to confuse the deer and repel them.
As deer and other creatures do not like and generally will not eat plants that have coarse, bristly, fuzzy, thorny or spiny textures, and anything with intense aromas or flavors, ah ha!
We have now found a crack.
Since deer (and other critters) depend on their incredible sense of smell to determine what is good and safe to eat, there is an extensive variety of strongly aromatic plants, herbs, shrubs and trees from which to choose.
We want to use these in our gardens to camouflage and be borders to deter the creatures by mixing these said deterrents higgledy-piggedly in amongst our other plants.
This may stop them by thinking the whole garden is made up of pungent, toxic, foul-tasting, unpalatable vegetation.
Several flowering plants, which include hyacinths, deer will not touch and, in some cases, will not even go near them.
So, plant hyacinths or a strong aromatic herb or marigolds around the perimeter of your yard or garden.
Since strong aromas repel deer, and deer don't like or enjoy eating of these plants, they will look elsewhere.
We want them to think our whole garden and yard are made up of these type of plants.
Bulbs, like daffodils, are on the don't eat list, too, If we were to "sprinkle" in thickly clumps of daffodils in amongst our tulips, deer and rodents would avoid the tulips, thinking it is a solid bed of daffodils.
Part three is to be finalized with a list of toxic, pungent, foul-tasting, unpalatable vegetation for our four-legged pests, be they deer or rodent.
Did you know?
Deer can consume up to 10 pounds of plant matter daily, and now they are telling us to build a fence, a very tall fence, to up 10 feet tall. One that will be completely deer-proof, according to Paul D. Curtis, Ph.D., an Extension wildlife specialist at Cornell University who concentrates on wildlife damage management. Not only are deer really smart, but they must also have grown wings, too, now?
Hope is a necessary ingredient in gardening, for nature is often capricious and our best efforts may be unsuccessful or need repeating.