Introduction: March 27, 1999

Bambi came for lunch one day, and the next, and the next, and the next...

From the Oval Garden, he ate Crocuses. Grape Hyacinths. Chionodoxa. Pushkinia. Tulips. Lilies. Bellflower. Echinacea. Mallows. From the South Path, he consumed all my Sundrops and Hostas. From the Angel Garden, he devoured WitchHazel, Azaleas, Epimedium, Jacob's ladder, Anemones...

I declared war. Bone meal, soap spray, flashing tin pans, pepper spray, eau de coyote, Onion spray... each item worked for a while, but one lapse in the application calendar and my plants were nubs again.

I bought a book: "Deer Proofing Your Yard and Garden", by Rhonda Massingham Hart. The buzzword is "Deer-O-Scaping".

The concept is simple: Be complicated. Do everything you can. Sprays, scarecrows, fences, mechanical devices, predator scents, planting schemes which include smelly or prickly plants, moving favorite plants next to your house... I won't list it all (buy the book or surf the net) but basically the idea is that deer get used to whatever simple deterrents you try, so you have to keep changing what you do, or get drastic.

I did get drastic about plant location. Although the tulips and crocuses in the Oval Garden were prime targets, Bambi left the South Foundation completely alone. This gives weight to the theory that Bambi would rather avoid the house. More on this theme below.

I'm not in the market for a fence, so I ruled that one out. But I tried a few other things that seemed, occasionally, to help.

I got a recipe for an onion-based spray off of the net (recipe) It seems to work very well if religiously applied once a week and after every rain.

On my azaleas and witchHazels, I carefully drizzled some nasssty, expensive stuff my husband bought called "SHOTGUN DEER REPELLENT" that says CAUTION on the side. I did that in the fall; March is almost over, and they've been untouched. Between that and the onion spray, the area has in general been avoided, except for a few tulip-snatchings when I forgot to onion- spray.

I have begun a routine, with my dog, of patrolling the entire perimeter of our property early morning and late at night. So far we have scared away one deer one morning, and three deer another morning. Every little bit helps, I hope.

In the meantime, on the more drastic side, I am moving all the plants I cherish closer to the house. Last year, I moved ALL my non-asaiatic lilies (except the daylilies)-- oriental, speciosus, trumpet, and "easter lilies"-- to the south foundation. This year, the asiatics got moved to the Southeast corner by the bulkhead. There are now over a hundred lilies against the south foundation wall and more by the bulkhead. (Too bad so many of them are white! So is the house...) But I hope to have blooms instead of nubs this year; whether they show up from a distance or not is secondary. And I plan to onion spray them anyway, just in case Bambi gets braver this year.

I had planned on moving the tulips and crocuses after they bloomed last year. Apparently I forgot, or something. When Bambi started lunching on them, I reasoned that if they stayed where they were, they'd get eaten in bud anyway, so what's to lose? I moved them all in one weekend... This was "The Violent Spring"... on my southwest corner, uprooted, newly-replanted, nipped-square, splaying tulips are curling their leaves with corkscrew puzzlement; crocuses are leaning drunkenly in every direction. The southeast corner, moved second, fared a little better for the experience and subsequent planning. Almost all my edible bulbs have been moved to the house. The only exception are two clumps of white-and-green wild hyacinths. I have to decide where on earth to put them. The South Foundation needs topdressing rather badly after I hastily crammed in all those grape hyacinths!

I also plan to grow my moonflowers and morning glories in the South Foundation garden, hoping to keep them out of Bambi's way. (They had a very short life last year.)

As far as the Echinacea and the Mallows go, what the deer leave, the Japanese beetles finish off, so why bother? Aside from four Echinacea in the Herb Garden, and a handful of mallows wedged in between lilies and tulips in the (now crammed) South Foundation, I ripped all the mallows and coneflowers out and gave them to someone who lives in the city. (I did apply some beneficial nematodes to my soil last summer; this spring, I have seen remarkably few Japanese Beetle Larva while digging. )

Some bellflowers have been moved to the Angel Garden.

Bambi supposedly detests Iris. Hah!! He demolishes mine, in the winter. Some he nips off, or yanks entirely out of the soil; the rest, he tramples, all winter long, in search of daisy foliage. Where once the Oval garden was ringed round with irises, this year I had only a handful. I've moved some to the southwest hillside, some to the laurel grove. Time will tell if they recover.

So what remains in the oval garden? Aside from the asters and the daisies, few things escaped the marauding scoundrel, but some plants did emerge completely unscathed. An interesting list:

Rose Campion, in the summer, goes unscathed, as do
daisies in the summer.
(In the winter, he gnaws them both, but they recover if well fed.)
Feverfew was untouched.
Catmint was untouched.
Dianthus, likewise, and
Butterfly Flower.
Daffodils, of course, are immune.
And in the Angel garden, Bleeding hearts were untouched.

In the Oval Garden, the phlox remains. Bambi loves it, but there's too much of it to move, and it looks too nice where it is. If I remember to pour bone meal over it every couple of months through the long winter, Bambi evades the nasty bone smell, and it survives. (This year I forgot the bone meal. On the two beds where Bambi dines, the bloom was spotty and the plants quite small; on the other two beds, the phlox was large and lovely.)

The Oval Garden also still contains four daylilies. I onion-spray them.

In the Angel Garden, if I forget to onion-spray it, the woodland phlox gets munched when it's in bloom.

One other lesson-learned concerning onion spray: even if Bambi has never touched a plant before, and he is reputed, by all dependable authorities, to hate and detest this form of plant-- if it is coming into bud, spray it. Bambi hasn't read the books and articles you have, and nobody has informed him what is considered haute-cuisine and what is considered beneath him. He'll try it. He'll taste-test it, the scavenging thief, and you'll come back to find all those lovely buds gone, gone, gone. SPRAY WHATEVER IS COMING INTO BUD. Keep spraying it as it blooms. (Why be sorry? Ruin his salad.)

To carry that theory one step further, if I have the supply and the energy, I onion-spray spray as many gardens as I can. I want Bambi & co to stop at my border and say "YeeeaaaUUUUUGH!!!! GROSS!! What kind of smelly pig grows this awful mess? Let's try somewhere else."

So, in concusion, my current strategy is to move tasty plants to the house, and onion spray them weekly; onion-spray anything else Bambi likes that I don't move, such as the four daylilies; move fuzzy, smelly, yucky, stinky plants out into Bambi's path; keep marching my dog around the perimeter of the property early morning and late at night; apply Onion spray to anything I think he might like or try, and see whether more blooms remain this year than last.

So far so good. In the Angel Garden especially, for the first time since they were planted three years ago, I saw Epimedium and Jacob's ladder (Polemium) both flourish and bloom lavishly.

Here's to a disgruntled "clientelle".

Well, there's a herd of them now. We've seen, regularly, two does and three fawns. And we found a buck-rub on our maple in the woods, which would explain the HUGE footprints nearby.

The onion spray works when applied, still, but one slip and there go the flowers. My garden looks like five deer have been traipsing through it consuming as they go, which they have. We see them in the morning, we see them in the evening. We see them, apparently, whenever they are hungry. My dogs chase them, but they return undeterred.

I am getting fed up. So I am beginning to select trees that look like they might be happy with a fence attatched to them. It won't happen this year, and maybe not next, but I hope to enclose the gardens near the house. The Oval garden is a loss, but the Angel Garden I will fight for.

Wish list: one eight foot deer fence with gates.