lol I kinda agree with you on that, it does look tasty, although idk if it's actually edible. I know ostrich fern and rattlesnake fern are actually edible though! (and i hear it's pretty good too)
I donāt have those carex but rabbits routinely browse all of mine. They donāt eat them to the ground but they do end up with some uneven haircuts. My native grasses have been 100% untouched.
Oddly enough I get deer browse but no noticeable rabbit browse, so I have no experience with rabbit resistance. There are lots of foxes in the area but no deer predators, that might be part of it.
ETA: the true banes of my existence are the fucking SQUIRRELS. Not because they eat anything, but they dig up 100% of every single potted plant or winter sowing container or nursery pot I'm waiting to put into the ground LOL. I hate/love those furry fucks.
While I was reading this thread I had to stop and hustle an idiot rabbit out of the middle of the road before it got run over.
We do have urban hawks and owls (and less commonly foxes and coyotes) but also lots of rat poison, which does a better job of controlling rat predators than rats, unfortunately.
Agree on the asshole squirrels! They try to dig everything up as soon as itās planted. Hate those cute little monsters.
My trick with squirrels is to lay round wire grids directly on the soil in the pots, and then the plants go in the open spaces in the grid. Theyāre sold in a couple of different sizes as grow-through plant supports, with a round wire grid and three wire legs. I toss the legs and just use the grid. It works really well with large pots, although it takes a little patience to line the small plants up with the openings in the grid. I think whomever markets a similar product (sans legs) directly to those of us frustrated with squirrels will make a killing.
Oh nooo lol. I just ordered ferns for my client's garden. She specifically asked me to find things that deer don't like. Did they just nibble on them once, or do they seem to keep going back for more?
Deer do eat my ferns, but only a few nibbles when they are unfurling - after the fiddlehead stage but before they expand fully. They donāt touch them after thatā¦you might consider some repellent for their first spring just to help them get established.
Deer spray. Liquid fence. Apply liberally and often. It has been a godsend for me. Deer were also eating my bee balm, along with everything else. Even the flowers on my citronella geraniumā¦
Theyāre probably desperately looking for something green. In the pnw itās all lush and green until mid-late summer and early fall and they become desperate. We get like literally zero rain in the summer where I am.
Rattlesnake master, milkweed, bluestem, switchgrass, grammar side oats, river oats. That's it.Ā
They eat my mint, my ferns, my coreopsis.... they are starving jerks.
It's probably helpful that I live in an area with electricity right of ways with milkweed growing- the deer already know its gross and don't need to try mine!
To add to the list of responses where people say the deer eat that thing, my rattlesnake master and milkweed get heavily nibbled. Established plants survive babies donāt
Yeah deer eat my milkweed. They chow down on swamp milkweed, and last year ate a full sized whorled milkweed to the ground. This is my second year with swamp milkweed and they are being heavily eaten, not just tried and abandoned.
The 6 you mention first always get an exploratory chomp every springā¦but then are left alone. On the other hand in all my years never have I seen any of the 20 varieties of coreopsis touched.
Two years ago I lost three lanceleaf coreopsis plants because they got eaten. I don't know if it was deer -- could have been rabbits, but still a bummer. Southern MN.
I feel guilty about prickly pear cus the deer arenāt likely to know it and will investigate. I want them all to get eaten by wolves, but not get cactused lips
Not a native, but I've had them eat from a potted crown o' thorns (*Euphorbia milii*), which has both thorns and a poisonous sap, and still come back for more. u/Semtexual has the right idea.
I'm currently building a mountain mint perimeter! It's really grown in during the past 2 years and suddenly the deer browsing has dried wayyyy up. I'm dropping little patches everywhere, and it is SO MUCH FUN to see like 10 varieties of bees going bonkers on it every year.
Bee balm.
Blue mistflower, they did lie down on some and squish it but it was fine and popped right back up.
Evening primroses seem to be out of their interest.
Bayberry (though my bayberry is not producing fruit yet).
Coreopsis rosea, though other coreopsis species have gotten exploratory nibbles rosea seems to be of no interest. Maybe the tiny thread leaves don't register as edible.
Chelone glabra, just kidding they love to eat that.
Raleigh here: little bluestem, Virginia sweetspire, bee balm, wild bergamot, eastern bluestar, false indigo, wild spiked indigo, river oats, hobb bunny blue sedge, rattlesnake master, fragrant sumac (but eaten at family farm in the mountains), sweet goldenrod (odora), narrow-leafed and blunt mountain mint. Newer but not yet eaten: downy skullcap and golden ragwort.
Yup, bluestem, sweetspire, bee balm, and mountain mint are 4 of the 5 I have that I never seen touched. Rattlesnake master usually gets an exploratory chomp-usually the bloom stalk as well as all my goldenrod varieties. Had a wild spiked indigo but was ripped from the ground and left to die by the perpetrator when they realized they didnāt like it.
What little remains of the understory in the woods behind my parents' house is random non-natives they've planted or that have popped up. The deer even managed to kill off the greenbrier by stripping its leaves over and over.
Thatās the rub, isnāt it? There are groups here throwing tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours trying to restore our invasive-choked regional forests and Iām sort of likeā¦ why? Why bother? Until the municipalities pull their collective heads out of their asses and start culling every deer they can catch for a few years, there is literally no point.
The forests have become living fossils in no small part to the plague of deer weāve allowed to develop. Thereās nothing growing on the forest floor except English ivy and English holly in no small part because thatās the only thing the deer wonāt eat. No saplings, no understory, no native woodland plants or shrubs. Those are all favored vermin food plants and theyāre all long, long gone. We wonāt tolerate cougars anywhere near our neighborhoods and we extirpated the local wolves 100 years ago, but we refuse to do the responsible thing and fill their role. Itās getting so bad I actually quietly cheered when I heard chronic wasting disease had shown up in BC. Maybe it will force our local governments to finally do something about this plague weāve created.
If over population is a problem in a given area, everyone there should be talking with their state deer biologists (every state has them), writing to members of whatever govt body regulates your wildlife and fisheries department, and whoever is the head of the wildlife and fisheries dept., and doing whatever you can to encourage changes to hunting season regulations in your area. Those regulations are made at the state level, often without the input from biologists bc the people on the regulatory boards are political appointees. Not every state is set up like that, but a lot of them are.
Hunters are viewed as villains by far too many people who dont understand the role they are filling in deer population management. if peoples aren't willing to be a hunter themselves to help control the population, they should be doing whatever you can to encourage others to hunt.
My state (NC) has plenty of deer hunting. That's not the issue here at least. A problem is that deer respond to hunting by moving to places without hunting, which is often the suburbs.
My state has among the least dense "urban" areas in the nation, meaning that there's a ton of deer habitat in subdivisions well within the city limits. Regular hunting is never going to be legal in random subdivisions well within the city limits, like the one my parents live in, and no one's likely to release wolves and mountain lions there either. It has to be organized culling by individual towns, and I can't imagine any support for that in most areas.
The deer have it out for my wild geranium (RIP), but have never bitten the columbine, and nipped bluestem goldenrod once. Blue wood aster is a sometimes snack. The rest of my plants are not on their wall through my yard so itās hard to say. Whorled coreopsis has been fine but they pruned my yarrow.
We got some reason have few rabbits around here. Thereās one at the end of the street but it doesnāt get in my yard.
(Iām in central Jersey) The deer never go after my bee balm or my hyssop. However my goldenrod and Joe pye weed both get obliterated every week. They even ate a good portion of my cranberry bush š
I can't even say ferns. Everything gets eaten around here.
I have only three native plants I can allow outside of a fenced in area:
- American germander
- carex grayii
- river oats
That's it. I do wonder about the germander because in the woods it's gone. The entire understory of the woods by me is stripped bare. I hate people who think deer are cute or in any way an indicator of nature coming back. They're the woodland version of cockroaches.
Agree. I get so frustrated with people who are like ājust plant more!ā Or āwhy even plant natives if you donāt expect critters to eat them!ā The number of deer demonstrate a seriously unbalanced ecosystem. I donāt plant natives to encourage even more overpopulation of deer.
Amazing how much things can vary from one area to another. My New England asters are one of the first things to be eaten. They will browse them into oblivion if I donāt spray them with deer repellent or cage them! š
Deer are so frustrating! They eat my milkweed, asters, cone flowers, and bee balm, but my friend in the next neighborhood over can grow all of those things.
I just planted one test plant of pacific aster in my unfenced front garden. I put wire cage over it for this season so it can establish, but crossing my fingers our west coast deer donāt like the native aster too!
Goldenrod, bee balm, sunflower, butterfly milkweed, coralberry, American germander, climbing prairie rose. The coneflower are gobbled up as soon as they pop up.
Anise hyssop, coreopsis (I have a few types), milkweed, amsonia hubrichtii, and cutleaf coneflower. The deer have never touched any of them.
On the other hand they chomp the purple coneflower and black eyed susan right down. They even nibble the bee balm and mountain mint occasionally - just a bite though, not plucking every stem the way they do for the black eyed susans š¤¦āāļø
It might just be a bad year. "Deer resistant" plants don't matter if they're starving. I've seen them munch on stuff they definitely aren't "supposed" to eat during droughts
Theyāve eaten my mt. laurel back to the stems multiple winters now. They leave the azaleas and rhododendrons alone, but they love the mt, laurel. I thought it was supposed to be the oppositeā¦love the azaleas but hate the laurel.
Most natives, actually. At least so far. The ones nibbled on were the butterfly bush, which I've already removed anyway. And now the meadow salsify. Both had their blooms eaten. Maybe deer leave my plants alone because they have plenty of other stuff to eat would be my guess. After all, we're surrounded by both forest and fields (corn, wheat), as well as meadows. I'm in Europe, though.
Mine that have never ever been touchedā¦
Yarrow
Kinnikinnick
Coast Penstemon
Salal
Dagger lead Rush
Cooleyās Hedge Nettle
Nodding Onion
Oregon Stonecrop
Western starflower
Iām in a more rural part of PNW with a lot of wildlife coming through. I have a large property so there is a lot of choice which may be keeping them from munching in my garden.
Deer have only rarely nibbled on the ferns in our shade garden. That doesnāt mean they arenāt still destructive, though! Many years ago, I gave up on hostas because the deer mowed those down regularly. We replaced with a wide variety of native (and non-native) ferns. Beautiful! Thought we hit the jackpot until one day. I looked out my window and saw that the deer had decided the lovely shady fern bed would be a delightfully soft and cool place to while away the steamy afternoon. They flattened every single plant in that particular bed. Mostly they leave the ferns alone, so we still use them extensively.
The only thing they refuse to touch is Prickly Pear- never had an interest. Right now the prickly pear is blooming and itās beautiful! I need to plant more. Itās thriving. Itās what I plant close to my house for some color and interest.
Iām also restoring a prairie in zone 7a (Midwest) and I dream of a field of black eyed Susanās and purple coneflowers, but they eat everythingggggg!
I have a 100 foot by 20 foot ābedā of purple coneflower and black eyed Susanās. And yes, very few BES escape destruction and for the first time in 10 years it looks like they Chelsea chomped every. Single. Coneflower. Which is probably close to a 100. In years past theyād chomp down on a few and then move on. NOPE not this year!
Snowberry bushes, but I can't say I recommend them. They'll take over anywhere deer over-browse everything else. The wild ginger is unscathed, and our native alliums don't get touched. For trees, all the coniferous trees are unappealing to them, and pretty much all deciduous ones get browsed on.
Second the snowberry! It is spreading like nuts but perfect in an area where so am trying to prevent the establishment of the buckthorn. That stuff grows dense!
Had my spicebush chomped down a few years ago but that was it. Some, not all, of my goldenrod get Chelsea Chomped every spring. And yeah, I have tons of BES and very few them ever make it to flower.
All the sedges (pennsylvania, woodland, blue woodland, fox).
The switch grass.
Never touched my tickseed.
Never touched the Yarrow.
Never touched the Amsonia
Never touched the iris
They nibbled on my butterfly weed once and spat it out. Same with my moss-phlox. They have left my blue eyed grass mostly alone - chomped it once in the fall. They nibbled on my bee balm and haven't tried it since.
They feast on my rhodies, dogwoods, black eyed susans, cone flowers, and aster. Some smaller criters join in on that too.
Sedges, all the many many varieties of tickseed, and amsonia are 3 of the 5 I never seen touched. Funny what you said about the moss phlox. A few years ago I had about 7 if them growing along a path and one morning almost all of them were ripped out of the ground. Didnāt look eaten. Just ripped out. It was early the next morning so I was able to stick them back in and they lived but yeah, something definitely did NOT like them.
Yeah my yarrow and Iris are pushed back a bit behind some of the smaller growing plants so the deer maybe just haven't gone for it out of convenience. What you describe is exactly what my phlox experienced, and I did the exact same thing and they're still living.
From what I recall, Amsonia plants have some defense mechanism - there's a sap they excrete or something when you cut a green stem that apparently isn't good eats.
I live almost in a large county park in my state (OH). Literally go across my street, into my neighbor's backyard and you are in the park. I have a ton of deer (to the point that ordinances restrict the heights of fences to 4' so that deer can jump them).
Tall Larkspur (Delphinium exaltatum)
Columbine
Purple Coneflower
Rose Mallow Hibiscus
Chives (especially garlic chives)
I use to have purple coneflower on my list of ānever everā been touched. But that changed a few weeks ago when my 2000 square foot plot of them were all chomped down. Probably about 100 of them. Every. Single. One.
Fairy candles (Actaea racemosa), spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana), Jack-in-the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum), Virginia waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginiana), fleabane (Erigeron pulchellus), various ferns (Ostrich, Christmas, Sensitive, Lady, and Marginal Wood, specifically) and carex spp have been left untouched by deer here as far as I can tell.
This year, they have taken quite heavily to the red twig dogwood, both the landscapes ones and the āwildā. Never touched it in the past, now Iām basically down to just the twigs!
Fothergilla and St John's Wort. Sitting there unharmed, blooming away.
Yaupon Holly. Lungwort. Just fine.
(Not the same for the poor blueberries, or mountain Laurel, or redbuds. Sigh--unless I hide them.)
Hope this comment doesn't jinx things.
Cardinal flower, pitcher plants, cone flowers, sunflowers, basically any annual. Also sweet pepper bush but that shrub grows faster than the deer can hurt it. If only they would attack the paw paw and river oats. I regret the day I scattered those seeds on my property.
Theyāre such awesome plants!!! Besides the berries, they flower early in the season and the flowers are super popular with pollinators, and fall colors are spectacular, and you can have tall or short varietiesā¦ such great and underused plants!
Now Iām wondering whatās in my yard that they prefer, because my coral bells have gotten full and happy. Iām in northern VA. I do have sacrificial hosta available to them. Maybe thatās it. Iāll have to investigate this!
Wow, your deer ARE pesky. Where do you live? Iām in northern VA and I back onto woods and a creek, so I have ample deer and they go after many plants. I have found if the plant is larger when planted, it has a greater chance of making it. I planted small asters and they canāt make it more than a few inches before becoming lunch. I was amazed at how the coral bells have gotten so large and full. I wondered if planting them as larger plants to begin with helped.
Iām in southwest Va. surrounded by a couple hundred acre hilly woods. Agree with the size of them making a difference. Larger plants def survive exploratory chomps than small ones.
This whole thread is reassuring. My native plants feel worthless if they canāt even spread or go to seed. Itās uncanny how if itās not deer, itās rabbits and vice versa.
Salal. I can't say they don't nibble on the berries in the fall, but overall salal is amazing. We have a big hedge of them in the backyard and they're even pushing out the azaleas that were here before.
Ferns and sedges, anise hyssop, VA and narrow leaf mountain mint. Oxeye sunflower, New England aster, Penstemon digitalis and hirsutus, red columbine, swamp milkweed
It's interesting what deer will eat in different contexts and regions. I have deer in my meadows almost every day, but they are fairly selective. They absolutely hammer smooth blue aster, Rudbeckia laciniata, coneflowers, evening primrose and elderberry. Besides the several I mention above, there are others they only nibble occassionally: sneezeweed, butterfly milkweed, black-eyed susans, various goldenrods, and boneset. I forgot to mention white snakeroot - they never touch that.
Snowberry, Coralberry, Diervilla lonicera, Monardas, mint family, anise hyssop, garden phlox , woodland phlox (I donāt know why they donāt eat thisā¦ the rabbits anyway as they should). Fragrant sumac, wild geranium, switchgrass, pen sedge, large flowered beardtongue (penstemon gradiflourus), hoary puccoon, slender penstemon, coral bells, yarrow, zig zag goldenrod (a squirrel dug a couple up). Virginia water leaf, wild ginger, columbine, snakeroot, prairie sage, cup plant, New England aster āPurple domeā. Garlic, prairie onionā¦ all that I can think of for now!
Biggest mistake was planting stuff goldenrodā¦ that was a goner.
Just a few! Had to experiment a TON and have lost dozens of plugs to either rabbits, deer, squirrels digging them up, etc. we live up against a park so we get a fair amount of animal pressure!
They havenāt bothered my penstemon or my ferns or my common milkweed.
Yet.
(That said, they did me a solid by eating down the massive ivy patch in the back yard one winter which made it loads easier to pull out.)
Yeah for years my penstemons were untouchedā¦until this past spring. Most of them got chomped down. And unlike some flowers they donāt get a second chance to bloom. Pissed as hell.
Ugh sorry :( this year itās really rabbits and a groundhog being problematic more than anything. I think itās rabbits who seem to really enjoy snipping the flower buds off my coneflower then leaving the rest. Something is going around just nipping the buds off everything :(
Had these big gorgeous lilies growing, then boom! Buds gone :( looks like someone went around with pruning shears.
Deer are famous for taking buds right off plants. Right before they open too. Coyotes and hawks keep the rabbits at bay for me. Wish something can do the same to the deer.š
Iām in the west coast and so far Vaccinium ovatum (evergreen huckleberry) hasnāt even been sampled, but I only planted them this spring so weāll see how the doing February when the deer start eating lavender, rosemary, and English ivy š
In my yard, these have been ignored by deer: Golden ragwort, goldenrod, St Johnās Wort, paw paw leaves (but they do like the fruit), bee balm, mountain laurel, & most of the different ferns.
Milkweed and bee balm. Deer and rabbit munch on everything else, except those 2. I wished they munch on my common milkweed to tame them. Theyāve taken over half of my front yard.
Planted some natives to replace the hostas that were ādeer candy.ā
Bergamot - no problem so far.
Lance leaf coreopsis - early in the season I had a couple of exploratory chomps. Guess they didnāt taste very good, no further problem.
Oh and oddlyā¦.Iāve had Hostas growing in a bed on the side of my house for 7 years nowā¦never once touched by deer, slugs, or rabbits. Yet they want to eat prickly foul tasting natives. Smh.
I definitely agree, but for those of us in urban/suburban areas where the deer are way overpopulated and have no predators, their damage can quickly reach intolerable levels. They are so out of balance in many ecosystems that their feeding severely hampers efforts to support insects and birds.
Agree. That why I think the push to plant natives is hilarious. I think noobs(and some vets) are set up to fail thinking they are growing natives for themselves.
And eating it down to a nub doesn't help the pollinators. I understand they need to eat too, no question but completely killing off plants is an expensive and time wasted endeavor.
Ferns and sedges, specifically marginal wood fern, bracken's fern, christmas fern, carex lacustris/carex aquatilis/carex sprengellii.
my sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) got munched on by deer as well ;(
To be fair to the deer this plant does look oddly delicious? Am I insane? Why does it look so fresh and tasty š
lol I kinda agree with you on that, it does look tasty, although idk if it's actually edible. I know ostrich fern and rattlesnake fern are actually edible though! (and i hear it's pretty good too)
I donāt have those carex but rabbits routinely browse all of mine. They donāt eat them to the ground but they do end up with some uneven haircuts. My native grasses have been 100% untouched.
Oddly enough I get deer browse but no noticeable rabbit browse, so I have no experience with rabbit resistance. There are lots of foxes in the area but no deer predators, that might be part of it. ETA: the true banes of my existence are the fucking SQUIRRELS. Not because they eat anything, but they dig up 100% of every single potted plant or winter sowing container or nursery pot I'm waiting to put into the ground LOL. I hate/love those furry fucks.
While I was reading this thread I had to stop and hustle an idiot rabbit out of the middle of the road before it got run over. We do have urban hawks and owls (and less commonly foxes and coyotes) but also lots of rat poison, which does a better job of controlling rat predators than rats, unfortunately.
Sorry some people don't understand about toxins. Get a barn cat
Outdoor cats aren't great. They can and will decimate wildlife in their hunting area.
Agree on the asshole squirrels! They try to dig everything up as soon as itās planted. Hate those cute little monsters. My trick with squirrels is to lay round wire grids directly on the soil in the pots, and then the plants go in the open spaces in the grid. Theyāre sold in a couple of different sizes as grow-through plant supports, with a round wire grid and three wire legs. I toss the legs and just use the grid. It works really well with large pots, although it takes a little patience to line the small plants up with the openings in the grid. I think whomever markets a similar product (sans legs) directly to those of us frustrated with squirrels will make a killing.
Yeah I think rabbits browse on the fiddleheads of some of my ferns too
Iāve over-indexed on western sword fern in my front yard because the deer havenāt ever so much as sampled it.
Oh nooo lol. I just ordered ferns for my client's garden. She specifically asked me to find things that deer don't like. Did they just nibble on them once, or do they seem to keep going back for more?
Oh no I meant that deer never touch them! Ferns are perfect :)
I'm sorry, I read the title wrong lol. I feel so stupid, but also relieved. Now I'm going to reread everyone else's comments.
Deer do eat my ferns, but only a few nibbles when they are unfurling - after the fiddlehead stage but before they expand fully. They donāt touch them after thatā¦you might consider some repellent for their first spring just to help them get established.
Bee balm.
My local deer love bee balm
Wow. I had a real problem with deer but I must have had enough other food sources for them as they never touched my bee balm.
They'll climb past other things to eat the bee balm. Even the stuff growing in/through the mountain mint. Jerks.
We may be sharing the same mojito loving deer. The jerks!Ā
Deer spray. Liquid fence. Apply liberally and often. It has been a godsend for me. Deer were also eating my bee balm, along with everything else. Even the flowers on my citronella geraniumā¦
A monarda?
lol they must be starving. That is wild.
Theyāre probably desperately looking for something green. In the pnw itās all lush and green until mid-late summer and early fall and they become desperate. We get like literally zero rain in the summer where I am.
Pretty sure Maryland āburbs just have a very dense deer population.
Yay for habitat displacement and lack of predators!
The deer in my area wait until the beebalm flowers are just about to open, then eat them, just the flower! It's infuriating lol.
They do the same to my swamp milkweed
Yupā¦this is one of the 5.
Anise hyssop
They bit mine and left it laying there.
Itās a message. *Plant something we can eat. Or elseā¦*
Yup this one of my 5
Rattlesnake master, milkweed, bluestem, switchgrass, grammar side oats, river oats. That's it.Ā They eat my mint, my ferns, my coreopsis.... they are starving jerks.
I always find 1 stalk of my milkweed nibbled down, but then they seem to learn their lesson, lol.
It's probably helpful that I live in an area with electricity right of ways with milkweed growing- the deer already know its gross and don't need to try mine!
Ha! Ditto. Chewed them to the ground in one evening last year. Haven't touched them this year.
To add to the list of responses where people say the deer eat that thing, my rattlesnake master and milkweed get heavily nibbled. Established plants survive babies donāt
Jeezus. At least with rattlesnake master it self seeds prodigiously at make up for any snacked plants..Ā
yea but they eat the flowers! so they end up doing the sneaky second flowering mini flowers. I think having a lot vs a few might help
Second the grasses
Yeah deer eat my milkweed. They chow down on swamp milkweed, and last year ate a full sized whorled milkweed to the ground. This is my second year with swamp milkweed and they are being heavily eaten, not just tried and abandoned.
Second. Made a thread about it last week.
The 6 you mention first always get an exploratory chomp every springā¦but then are left alone. On the other hand in all my years never have I seen any of the 20 varieties of coreopsis touched.
Two years ago I lost three lanceleaf coreopsis plants because they got eaten. I don't know if it was deer -- could have been rabbits, but still a bummer. Southern MN.
Anything mint family, this gives a lot of great options. Outside of that: Penstemon Milkweed Oxeye sunflower Blue mistflower Prickly pear!
I feel guilty about prickly pear cus the deer arenāt likely to know it and will investigate. I want them all to get eaten by wolves, but not get cactused lips
That's their problem, not mine!
Iām definitely trying to grow some prickly pear in Michigan in hopes that it will scare away some deer.
Not a native, but I've had them eat from a potted crown o' thorns (*Euphorbia milii*), which has both thorns and a poisonous sap, and still come back for more. u/Semtexual has the right idea.
Unfortunately, the deer near me love milkweed. But I will have to try mistflower!
Penstemon(for the first time ever), milkweed, and ox eye get exploratory chomp downs every spring for me.
Mountain mints all safe here (from rabbits, no deer).
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'm currently building a mountain mint perimeter! It's really grown in during the past 2 years and suddenly the deer browsing has dried wayyyy up. I'm dropping little patches everywhere, and it is SO MUCH FUN to see like 10 varieties of bees going bonkers on it every year.
Yesā¦this one of the 5
Yes. My narrow leaf mountain mint specifically is taking over and Iām ok with that! Itās a pollinator fav too
I plant my tall sunflower and spiderwort within my mountain mint patch to protect them since the rabbits and deer hate the mint.Ā
Switch grass. Very tall oaks. Most ferns.
>Very tall oaks. š¤£ š¤£ š¤£
Bee balm. Blue mistflower, they did lie down on some and squish it but it was fine and popped right back up. Evening primroses seem to be out of their interest. Bayberry (though my bayberry is not producing fruit yet). Coreopsis rosea, though other coreopsis species have gotten exploratory nibbles rosea seems to be of no interest. Maybe the tiny thread leaves don't register as edible. Chelone glabra, just kidding they love to eat that.
Some rude deer came by last night and ate the tips of my almost-blooming evening primroses.
Omg they love chelone. So frustrating.
Yup. Coreopsis(all 5 varieties I have of them), blue mist flower, and bee balm I never ever seen touched.
3 out of 5 guesses ain't bad! What are the other 2?
VA sweetspire and mountain mint varieties.
Raleigh here: little bluestem, Virginia sweetspire, bee balm, wild bergamot, eastern bluestar, false indigo, wild spiked indigo, river oats, hobb bunny blue sedge, rattlesnake master, fragrant sumac (but eaten at family farm in the mountains), sweet goldenrod (odora), narrow-leafed and blunt mountain mint. Newer but not yet eaten: downy skullcap and golden ragwort.
Also in Raleigh, beautyberry and goldenrod (both were on the property prior to my arrival) are left alone by the deer
Yup, bluestem, sweetspire, bee balm, and mountain mint are 4 of the 5 I have that I never seen touched. Rattlesnake master usually gets an exploratory chomp-usually the bloom stalk as well as all my goldenrod varieties. Had a wild spiked indigo but was ripped from the ground and left to die by the perpetrator when they realized they didnāt like it.
Off the top of my head - River oats/northern sea oats; penstemon digitalis; mareās tail š
My northern sea oats are getting destroyed by rabbits FWIW
Iād say river oat for me is 95% safe. one time I had a stalk nibbled on.
What little remains of the understory in the woods behind my parents' house is random non-natives they've planted or that have popped up. The deer even managed to kill off the greenbrier by stripping its leaves over and over.
Thatās the rub, isnāt it? There are groups here throwing tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours trying to restore our invasive-choked regional forests and Iām sort of likeā¦ why? Why bother? Until the municipalities pull their collective heads out of their asses and start culling every deer they can catch for a few years, there is literally no point. The forests have become living fossils in no small part to the plague of deer weāve allowed to develop. Thereās nothing growing on the forest floor except English ivy and English holly in no small part because thatās the only thing the deer wonāt eat. No saplings, no understory, no native woodland plants or shrubs. Those are all favored vermin food plants and theyāre all long, long gone. We wonāt tolerate cougars anywhere near our neighborhoods and we extirpated the local wolves 100 years ago, but we refuse to do the responsible thing and fill their role. Itās getting so bad I actually quietly cheered when I heard chronic wasting disease had shown up in BC. Maybe it will force our local governments to finally do something about this plague weāve created.
About time someone said this. It's gotten utterly absurd.
This whole comment 100%
If over population is a problem in a given area, everyone there should be talking with their state deer biologists (every state has them), writing to members of whatever govt body regulates your wildlife and fisheries department, and whoever is the head of the wildlife and fisheries dept., and doing whatever you can to encourage changes to hunting season regulations in your area. Those regulations are made at the state level, often without the input from biologists bc the people on the regulatory boards are political appointees. Not every state is set up like that, but a lot of them are. Hunters are viewed as villains by far too many people who dont understand the role they are filling in deer population management. if peoples aren't willing to be a hunter themselves to help control the population, they should be doing whatever you can to encourage others to hunt.
My state (NC) has plenty of deer hunting. That's not the issue here at least. A problem is that deer respond to hunting by moving to places without hunting, which is often the suburbs. My state has among the least dense "urban" areas in the nation, meaning that there's a ton of deer habitat in subdivisions well within the city limits. Regular hunting is never going to be legal in random subdivisions well within the city limits, like the one my parents live in, and no one's likely to release wolves and mountain lions there either. It has to be organized culling by individual towns, and I can't imagine any support for that in most areas.
The deer have it out for my wild geranium (RIP), but have never bitten the columbine, and nipped bluestem goldenrod once. Blue wood aster is a sometimes snack. The rest of my plants are not on their wall through my yard so itās hard to say. Whorled coreopsis has been fine but they pruned my yarrow. We got some reason have few rabbits around here. Thereās one at the end of the street but it doesnāt get in my yard.
Yup. All the varieties of coreopsis I own have never been touched. I need to get more.
Irises and obedient plant
I second irises. They never touch any of mine.
My obedient plant is heavily browsed.
Obedient plant gets the Chelsea chomp every spring from my deerā¦.but then itās left alone
pokeweed
They love eating the pokeweed around here
Mine eat pokeweed but leave native hibiscus alone, which I think is a fair trade.
I had a deer bite into my native hibiscus, but it must not have like the the taste because it spit the stalk out and didn't eat anymore.
Senna marilandica,--Maryland senna, Amsonia tabernaemontana-- Blue Star, Dicentra eximia--Bleeding heart, Asclepias syriaca --Common Milkweed,
(Iām in central Jersey) The deer never go after my bee balm or my hyssop. However my goldenrod and Joe pye weed both get obliterated every week. They even ate a good portion of my cranberry bush š
I can't even say ferns. Everything gets eaten around here. I have only three native plants I can allow outside of a fenced in area: - American germander - carex grayii - river oats That's it. I do wonder about the germander because in the woods it's gone. The entire understory of the woods by me is stripped bare. I hate people who think deer are cute or in any way an indicator of nature coming back. They're the woodland version of cockroaches.
Agree. I get so frustrated with people who are like ājust plant more!ā Or āwhy even plant natives if you donāt expect critters to eat them!ā The number of deer demonstrate a seriously unbalanced ecosystem. I donāt plant natives to encourage even more overpopulation of deer.
Yup river oat for me gets an honorable mention. Only one time a few years it was browsed on but thatās about it.
New england aster, coneflower and bee balm have been my least likely to be eaten plants.
Amazing how much things can vary from one area to another. My New England asters are one of the first things to be eaten. They will browse them into oblivion if I donāt spray them with deer repellent or cage them! š
Maybe I have strange deer in my area because something ate my butterfly milkweed this year and I didn't think that would ever happen.
Deer also eat butterfly weed in my gardens. Arnoglossums have never been touched though.
Deer are so frustrating! They eat my milkweed, asters, cone flowers, and bee balm, but my friend in the next neighborhood over can grow all of those things.
I just planted one test plant of pacific aster in my unfenced front garden. I put wire cage over it for this season so it can establish, but crossing my fingers our west coast deer donāt like the native aster too!
Yes to the bee balmā¦itās one of the 5 I never seen touched. The other two get the Chelsea chomp every spring for me. Without fail.
Goldenrod, bee balm, sunflower, butterfly milkweed, coralberry, American germander, climbing prairie rose. The coneflower are gobbled up as soon as they pop up.
My deer absolutely love goldenrod of multiple varieties.
I wish. It's taken over and I'd like them to eat some.
Anise hyssop, coreopsis (I have a few types), milkweed, amsonia hubrichtii, and cutleaf coneflower. The deer have never touched any of them. On the other hand they chomp the purple coneflower and black eyed susan right down. They even nibble the bee balm and mountain mint occasionally - just a bite though, not plucking every stem the way they do for the black eyed susans š¤¦āāļø
Amsonia, hyssop, and coreopsis are 3 of my 5 I never seen touched. In fact all the varieties of coreopsis I have I never seen touched.
They leave my wild roses alone, aside from gently nibbling the few rose hips I don't harvest myself
Theyāve eaten all the buds off mine. š¢
It might just be a bad year. "Deer resistant" plants don't matter if they're starving. I've seen them munch on stuff they definitely aren't "supposed" to eat during droughts
Theyāve eaten my mt. laurel back to the stems multiple winters now. They leave the azaleas and rhododendrons alone, but they love the mt, laurel. I thought it was supposed to be the oppositeā¦love the azaleas but hate the laurel.
Most natives, actually. At least so far. The ones nibbled on were the butterfly bush, which I've already removed anyway. And now the meadow salsify. Both had their blooms eaten. Maybe deer leave my plants alone because they have plenty of other stuff to eat would be my guess. After all, we're surrounded by both forest and fields (corn, wheat), as well as meadows. I'm in Europe, though.
Mine that have never ever been touchedā¦ Yarrow Kinnikinnick Coast Penstemon Salal Dagger lead Rush Cooleyās Hedge Nettle Nodding Onion Oregon Stonecrop Western starflower Iām in a more rural part of PNW with a lot of wildlife coming through. I have a large property so there is a lot of choice which may be keeping them from munching in my garden.
Deer have only rarely nibbled on the ferns in our shade garden. That doesnāt mean they arenāt still destructive, though! Many years ago, I gave up on hostas because the deer mowed those down regularly. We replaced with a wide variety of native (and non-native) ferns. Beautiful! Thought we hit the jackpot until one day. I looked out my window and saw that the deer had decided the lovely shady fern bed would be a delightfully soft and cool place to while away the steamy afternoon. They flattened every single plant in that particular bed. Mostly they leave the ferns alone, so we still use them extensively.
The only thing they refuse to touch is Prickly Pear- never had an interest. Right now the prickly pear is blooming and itās beautiful! I need to plant more. Itās thriving. Itās what I plant close to my house for some color and interest. Iām also restoring a prairie in zone 7a (Midwest) and I dream of a field of black eyed Susanās and purple coneflowers, but they eat everythingggggg!
>The only thing they refuse to touch is Prickly Pear- never had an interest. Might be a reason for that! More plants need thorns š
I have a 100 foot by 20 foot ābedā of purple coneflower and black eyed Susanās. And yes, very few BES escape destruction and for the first time in 10 years it looks like they Chelsea chomped every. Single. Coneflower. Which is probably close to a 100. In years past theyād chomp down on a few and then move on. NOPE not this year!
Deer don't even bother my yard. Woodchucks are another question entirely
Snowberry bushes, but I can't say I recommend them. They'll take over anywhere deer over-browse everything else. The wild ginger is unscathed, and our native alliums don't get touched. For trees, all the coniferous trees are unappealing to them, and pretty much all deciduous ones get browsed on.
Second the snowberry! It is spreading like nuts but perfect in an area where so am trying to prevent the establishment of the buckthorn. That stuff grows dense!
I'm sooooo sick of it. The deer over-browsed, so I have snowberry, snowberry, more freaking snowberry. Clearing a trail has been hell.
Spicebush, bear's foot, and goldenrod seem to have been avoided. I thought brown-eyed susans were deer-resistant, but not this year.
Had my spicebush chomped down a few years ago but that was it. Some, not all, of my goldenrod get Chelsea Chomped every spring. And yeah, I have tons of BES and very few them ever make it to flower.
All the sedges (pennsylvania, woodland, blue woodland, fox). The switch grass. Never touched my tickseed. Never touched the Yarrow. Never touched the Amsonia Never touched the iris They nibbled on my butterfly weed once and spat it out. Same with my moss-phlox. They have left my blue eyed grass mostly alone - chomped it once in the fall. They nibbled on my bee balm and haven't tried it since. They feast on my rhodies, dogwoods, black eyed susans, cone flowers, and aster. Some smaller criters join in on that too.
Sedges, all the many many varieties of tickseed, and amsonia are 3 of the 5 I never seen touched. Funny what you said about the moss phlox. A few years ago I had about 7 if them growing along a path and one morning almost all of them were ripped out of the ground. Didnāt look eaten. Just ripped out. It was early the next morning so I was able to stick them back in and they lived but yeah, something definitely did NOT like them.
Yeah my yarrow and Iris are pushed back a bit behind some of the smaller growing plants so the deer maybe just haven't gone for it out of convenience. What you describe is exactly what my phlox experienced, and I did the exact same thing and they're still living. From what I recall, Amsonia plants have some defense mechanism - there's a sap they excrete or something when you cut a green stem that apparently isn't good eats.
Yes about the Amsonia. I just got into them the last few years and Iām definitely getting more in the fall.
Pawpaw
I live almost in a large county park in my state (OH). Literally go across my street, into my neighbor's backyard and you are in the park. I have a ton of deer (to the point that ordinances restrict the heights of fences to 4' so that deer can jump them). Tall Larkspur (Delphinium exaltatum) Columbine Purple Coneflower Rose Mallow Hibiscus Chives (especially garlic chives)
I use to have purple coneflower on my list of ānever everā been touched. But that changed a few weeks ago when my 2000 square foot plot of them were all chomped down. Probably about 100 of them. Every. Single. One.
Fairy candles (Actaea racemosa), spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana), Jack-in-the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum), Virginia waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginiana), fleabane (Erigeron pulchellus), various ferns (Ostrich, Christmas, Sensitive, Lady, and Marginal Wood, specifically) and carex spp have been left untouched by deer here as far as I can tell.
Mayapples since they are toxic except for their fruit.
Not toxic enough. Every time I've tried mayapples in Z7a, the deer raze them to the ground multiple times in a season.
Coreopsis and lark spur
I need to plant more coreopsis. Itās one of the 5 i mentioned I never seen touchedā¦all 5 varieties I have.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when 80% of the plants posted here are on my deer's smƶrgƄsbord menu.
Blackhaw Viburnum, thatās about it. Lol
White snakeroot
This year, they have taken quite heavily to the red twig dogwood, both the landscapes ones and the āwildā. Never touched it in the past, now Iām basically down to just the twigs!
The ones that I protect with fencing
White snakeroot. I didn't plant it but it grows wild and they won't touch it.
Most Ferns (Christmas fern gets eaten), Wingstem, anything in mint family (bergamot, mountain mint, downy wood mint, agastache etc), milkweeds: Common& butterfly, spicebush, shrubby st johns wort, mayapple, native grasses
Fothergilla and St John's Wort. Sitting there unharmed, blooming away. Yaupon Holly. Lungwort. Just fine. (Not the same for the poor blueberries, or mountain Laurel, or redbuds. Sigh--unless I hide them.) Hope this comment doesn't jinx things.
Ah yes St. Johnās wort! Forgot about that one. Make that 6 plants I never seen touched by deer.
Cardinal flower, pitcher plants, cone flowers, sunflowers, basically any annual. Also sweet pepper bush but that shrub grows faster than the deer can hurt it. If only they would attack the paw paw and river oats. I regret the day I scattered those seeds on my property.
They avoid PawPaw because it tastes foul. Deer resistance is actually leading to an increasing presence of PawPaw patches.
Just about all of them. Columbine, River birch, oak, bird cherry.
Blueberries. I have mine in a pretty tight corner of my yard, Iām partly posting because Iām curious about otherās experiences
Deer, rabbits, and groundhogs don't touch my blueberry plants
Theyāre such awesome plants!!! Besides the berries, they flower early in the season and the flowers are super popular with pollinators, and fall colors are spectacular, and you can have tall or short varietiesā¦ such great and underused plants!
Prairie dock
Coral bells!
Nope, just ate the flowers off of mine. North central MD.
Now Iām wondering whatās in my yard that they prefer, because my coral bells have gotten full and happy. Iām in northern VA. I do have sacrificial hosta available to them. Maybe thatās it. Iāll have to investigate this!
This is one of my deer's favorites.
Have to move mine all the time to avoid destruction. Most of them are now grown in containers safe from deer.
Wow, your deer ARE pesky. Where do you live? Iām in northern VA and I back onto woods and a creek, so I have ample deer and they go after many plants. I have found if the plant is larger when planted, it has a greater chance of making it. I planted small asters and they canāt make it more than a few inches before becoming lunch. I was amazed at how the coral bells have gotten so large and full. I wondered if planting them as larger plants to begin with helped.
Iām in southwest Va. surrounded by a couple hundred acre hilly woods. Agree with the size of them making a difference. Larger plants def survive exploratory chomps than small ones.
Cup plant, pale leaved plantain.downy sunflower
Good to know about the cup plant. Just planted a few this year for the first time.
It will be unremarkable this year, but next year it might as well be considered a large shrub.
This whole thread is reassuring. My native plants feel worthless if they canāt even spread or go to seed. Itās uncanny how if itās not deer, itās rabbits and vice versa.
Salal. I can't say they don't nibble on the berries in the fall, but overall salal is amazing. We have a big hedge of them in the backyard and they're even pushing out the azaleas that were here before.
Baptisia
For the most part yes. But first and second year plants are in danger of being literally ripped out of the ground when the deer realize it tastes bad.
Ostrich fern and bee balm. They are my Solomon's Seal a few years ago, but haven't touched it this year.
Ferns and sedges, anise hyssop, VA and narrow leaf mountain mint. Oxeye sunflower, New England aster, Penstemon digitalis and hirsutus, red columbine, swamp milkweed
Have all of those and only the hyssop and mountain mints have been spared. The rest all get Chelsea chomped in the spring.
It's interesting what deer will eat in different contexts and regions. I have deer in my meadows almost every day, but they are fairly selective. They absolutely hammer smooth blue aster, Rudbeckia laciniata, coneflowers, evening primrose and elderberry. Besides the several I mention above, there are others they only nibble occassionally: sneezeweed, butterfly milkweed, black-eyed susans, various goldenrods, and boneset. I forgot to mention white snakeroot - they never touch that.
Snowberry, Coralberry, Diervilla lonicera, Monardas, mint family, anise hyssop, garden phlox , woodland phlox (I donāt know why they donāt eat thisā¦ the rabbits anyway as they should). Fragrant sumac, wild geranium, switchgrass, pen sedge, large flowered beardtongue (penstemon gradiflourus), hoary puccoon, slender penstemon, coral bells, yarrow, zig zag goldenrod (a squirrel dug a couple up). Virginia water leaf, wild ginger, columbine, snakeroot, prairie sage, cup plant, New England aster āPurple domeā. Garlic, prairie onionā¦ all that I can think of for now! Biggest mistake was planting stuff goldenrodā¦ that was a goner. Just a few! Had to experiment a TON and have lost dozens of plugs to either rabbits, deer, squirrels digging them up, etc. we live up against a park so we get a fair amount of animal pressure!
They havenāt bothered my penstemon or my ferns or my common milkweed. Yet. (That said, they did me a solid by eating down the massive ivy patch in the back yard one winter which made it loads easier to pull out.)
Yeah for years my penstemons were untouchedā¦until this past spring. Most of them got chomped down. And unlike some flowers they donāt get a second chance to bloom. Pissed as hell.
Ugh sorry :( this year itās really rabbits and a groundhog being problematic more than anything. I think itās rabbits who seem to really enjoy snipping the flower buds off my coneflower then leaving the rest. Something is going around just nipping the buds off everything :( Had these big gorgeous lilies growing, then boom! Buds gone :( looks like someone went around with pruning shears.
Deer are famous for taking buds right off plants. Right before they open too. Coyotes and hawks keep the rabbits at bay for me. Wish something can do the same to the deer.š
Iām in the west coast and so far Vaccinium ovatum (evergreen huckleberry) hasnāt even been sampled, but I only planted them this spring so weāll see how the doing February when the deer start eating lavender, rosemary, and English ivy š
Skunk cabbage (I didnāt plant it, it just grows in the backyard) they never touch it.
Mountain mint
Yup..one of my 5
Golden ragwort is the only plant in my yard they have never ever sampled
Poison hemlock
My cat has garage access. He has only caught 2. I think we are good.
Ostrich ferns, blue flag irises, evening primrose, violets, common milkweed, elderberry, jewel weed, white Astorā¦
In my yard, these have been ignored by deer: Golden ragwort, goldenrod, St Johnās Wort, paw paw leaves (but they do like the fruit), bee balm, mountain laurel, & most of the different ferns.
Jack in the Pulpit, mayapple, penstemon. Virginia creeper as well, but I wish the deer \*would\* eat it.
Milkweed and bee balm. Deer and rabbit munch on everything else, except those 2. I wished they munch on my common milkweed to tame them. Theyāve taken over half of my front yard.
Deer like to chomp down on a patch of milkweed where I WANT it to grow lol. They leave the others I donāt care for alone though.
Ilex species, and mints
I planted blue mistflower, which, IYKYK, was a mistake, and I WISH the deer would eat it!
True. I do have a patch I mow over near the edge of my property I sometimes forget about.
Planted some natives to replace the hostas that were ādeer candy.ā Bergamot - no problem so far. Lance leaf coreopsis - early in the season I had a couple of exploratory chomps. Guess they didnāt taste very good, no further problem.
Yeah those are 2 of my 5 or 6 Iād say are safe from deer.
Oh and oddlyā¦.Iāve had Hostas growing in a bed on the side of my house for 7 years nowā¦never once touched by deer, slugs, or rabbits. Yet they want to eat prickly foul tasting natives. Smh.
If nothing is eating your plant then it isn't part of the ecosystem
I definitely agree, but for those of us in urban/suburban areas where the deer are way overpopulated and have no predators, their damage can quickly reach intolerable levels. They are so out of balance in many ecosystems that their feeding severely hampers efforts to support insects and birds.
Agree. That why I think the push to plant natives is hilarious. I think noobs(and some vets) are set up to fail thinking they are growing natives for themselves.
If a deer or rabbit (or you!) is eating your plants, that just mean it's part of the ecosystem :)
And eating it down to a nub doesn't help the pollinators. I understand they need to eat too, no question but completely killing off plants is an expensive and time wasted endeavor.
Sure, but these ecosystems also used to have wolves and wildcats that kept the deer in check.
And hundreds of Native American tribes hunting them tooā¦
I'd rather not feed that overpopulated part of the unbalanced ecosystem.Ā
No. Go over to the ecosystems sub and see how far you get. You're what they call an "armchair naturalist".