The Story of Doe #45

01.10.2024 - 04:29 / finegardening.com / GPOD Contributor

Hi GPODers!

Today we’ve got a short story that is a tale as old as time, or as old as gardeners have been planting flowers to be enjoyed rather than munched on by curious neighbors. Kathryn ‘Kit’ Jensen has shared her garden a couple of times in the past (Check out those submissions here: Bulbs in Northeastern Ohio and Finding Solace in Kit’s Garden), and today she’s sharing a very relatable run-in with a cute but destructive garden guests.

I live in an older suburb of the metro Cleveland area—South Euclid. We are blessed with city parks, a section of the Metroparks, and creeks. The downside is the deer. The city, like others, is experimenting with deer sterilization.

Below is doe #45, named after her tag. Now, three sides of my backyard are fenced but occasionally deer will wander up the driveway.

This became the favorite spot for #45, under the redbud trees, next to Solomon’s Seal, and white anemones, tucked behind a curve of perennial chrysanthemums, zinnias, alyssum, a tree hydrangea, verbena bonariensis, purple lovegrass, and “pearl”, a yarrow. Idyllic! There she was on a September morning. After persuasion, deer #45 left.

But…here is #45 back again on the second morning, and after spraying. The rope in the background is a clothesline I used to deter deer from munching on the oakleaf hydrangeas along the fence over winter. That works.

The third picture is my solution—garden chairs and flower stakes sticking up in the bed between the chairs.

So far, so good. Have others found inventive ways to prevent deer from moving in on gardens?

We’re lucky to have a a pretty decent sized fence that keeps deer from snaking on our plants, but we haven’t been so lucky with the groundhogs. We’ve tried just about every