Creative Gardening Remedies for Deer Protection

Creative Gardening Remedies for Deer Protection
February 2, 2024 Sabine Schoenberg
Creative garden remedies to keep deer out of your gardens

Gardeners will tell you creative garden remedies for deer protection are an often-discussed topic among gardeners. Such garden remedies are much needed, as it only takes one night of deer munching to have years of gardening eaten to shreds. There are no natural predators to keep deer populations in check.  Thus too many deer decimate our gardens and even natural forests.

To all treehuggers: Today, the so-called understory or new growth of trees in forests is being munched away by overpopulations of deer. The net effect: Where deer roam, there is little to no new tree growth. As old-growth trees come down over time, there are fewer and fewer young trees to naturally replace them. Over time, the net effect is deforestation.

Commonly Used Garden Remedies

Gardens are equally being attacked by hungry deer. From Martha Steward to Planet Natural, and many other sites deer prevention methods are discussed at length. Common gardening remedies include:

(1) Plant ONLY plantings deer do not like to touch or smell

                • While there are many, it is still a limited selection

(2) Spray shrubs and plants with deer repellants of various sorts

                • This constant upkeep work that smells pretty bad to boot

(3) Install high-perimeter deer fencing or even electric fencing

                • This is a visually ugly and expensive solution

Natural Deer Preventions

Here are two additional organic pest control methods. They are less discussed gardening remedies that appear to have been effective in keeping deer away from your gardens for a while:

(1) Creating wide wood chip barriers on the theory that deer will not cross them. I have yet to see deer respecting these.

(2) Blue strobe lights.  This German technique worked for a while. For some time, resetting different strobing light patterns indeed kept deer at bay. But they learn rather quickly so it is at best a temporary 6-month protection.

 Is there a better way?

Breakthrough in Deer Protection?

SHG Living’s show Going Green may have shown us a solution.  Going Green features a Sanctuary success story in Kenya, Africa.

It turns out local communities surrounding the wildlife sanctuaries welcome reductions in wildlife – everything from antelopes to giraffes, elephants, and more.  It wasn’t just the money they may have received from poachers. Far more important to the existence of these communities was to win a survival fight against wildlife to ensure their crops /food supply.

Gardening Remedies for Deer Control

Going Green’s documentary presents that someone discovered that none of the wild animals like bees.  All wildlife species avoid bee colonies. This means that instead of installing and maintaining tall, strong, and expensive fencing bee hives were installed within certain distances of each other WITHOUT any further barrier fencing in between.

No further fencing was installed – only bee hives were installed as garden and vital crop protection. There is even more good news. GoingGreen reports that local communities harvest significantly higher crop yields and, of course, local honey which they now sell to earn further money for the entire village.  It’s a win-win-win!

Might this be the natural and truly innovative way to re-direct deer from our gardens? I wonder if landscape designers with a focus on native solutions know about this potential method.

Could bee hives be the ultimate garden remedy against deer assaults on our gardens? Do you have experience with bee hive garden remedies? I would love to hear.

Image by Chris Deerhow