Quite often I am asked the question, "How can I protect my roses from the deer?"
I wish I could be more encouraging, but the only answer that I know is to get a good dog and / or separate the deer from the roses. No matter what else you may do, if a deer can get his (or her) lips and teeth to the foliage, they will eat it. That goes for ALL roses, even Rugosa roses with millions of thorns, and Lady Banks roses that are supposed to taste bad. Furthermore, if the climate is dry, browsing food is scarce, and the deer are hungry, they will become quite inventive and innovate in their efforts to get within eating distance of your roses ---- with sadly predictable results.
The insatiable appetites of deer are legendary, and they are only whetted by supplemental feeding. Some uninformed people think that deer eat roses because they do not have enough other things to eat. These poor misguided souls buy corn by the truckload, and feed the deer in hopes that the little critters will get full and leave the roses alone. Well deer do prefer corn, and they will eat it first. But rest assured that when the deer have finished their appetizer and the corn is gone, they will eagerly move on to the main course -- your roses. Furthermore, when the deer learn that you are putting out corn every day, they will tell their buddies, aunts, uncles, cousins, and casual acquaintances. So pretty soon your front yard will look like your favorite restaurant at lunch time on Mother’s Day!
Deer may not seem like a problem for people in areas of the country with low deer population densities, but rest assured that it is a huge problem in the Texas Hill Country. About a century ago, there was a large and thriving population of mountain lions in the Texas Hill Country. Evidence of this condition remains in the names of towns and geographical features immediately north of San Antonio, such as, "Leon Creek", "Leon Springs", "Leon Valley", etc. ("leon" is the Spanish word for "lion"). The mountain lion’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner of choice was (and still is) deer. So in those happy days, there were rather few deer, and unprotected roses and ornamental plants had a reasonable chance of lasting more than just one night. Unfortunately, the mountain lions had a regrettable habit of spicing up their bland diet by eating an occasional calf, dog, or child, and this culinary habit was one to which the ranchers took great exception. The entirely predictable result was (a) that the ranchers tried to exterminate the mountain lions, and (b) that the deer population exploded. By 1967, a survey of deer populations in Kendall County by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department indicated that there was one deer for every 2-1/2 acres.
Deer are very much like goats. They will eat practically anything, but they prefer the tender foliage of new growth on small trees, shrubs and particularly roses. Deer are also like goats in that they never seem to have eaten enough to fully satisfy them. Cows will eat for a while and then lie down to digest and rest. But not deer -- they just nibble, and nibble, and nibble their way through life.
So what can you do to protect your landscape and roses from the deer? Here are several creative, if mostly impractical, answers:
OPTION 1: (Not really recommended)
Get a pet mountain lion.
OPTION 2:
Get a pet that resembles some other ferocious predator. A sizeable, territorial, and aggressive dog fits the bill pretty well. Unfortunately, there is always the possibility that your dog will take his job a bit to seriously, and either (a) spend his days and nights barking at the deer, with predictable effect on your sleep habits, or (b) spend his days and nights chasing deer all over the countryside, which will leave your roses unprotected from the next deer that passes by. Therefore, if you get a dog, it is best to enclose him in a low fence that also encloses your rose garden. That way, “Fido” may stick around long enough to discourage the deer. Actually, the size of the dog does not seem to matter very much as long as his behavior is convincing. I have seen a lot of deer run for their lives from a "yappy" 20-pound canine.
OPTION 3:
Simulate the aftermath of a predator attack. Some people have invested a lot of time, energy and money in trying to convince the deer that "something really bad" has just happened in their rose garden. The general approach is to buy a lot of blood meal and spread it around. The deer smell the "blood" and decide that this might not be a safe place to have a leisurely lunch. It is a very effective short term solution, but the deer will eventually decide that it is just another futile human attempt to keep them from eating the roses, and the nibbling and muching will resume. Also, while the smell of blood is initially offensive to deer, it seems to be even more offensive to humans and for a much longer time. In other words, if you make your rose garden stink for the deer, it will probably stink for you too. Finally, blood meal is a good fertilizer because it quickly soaks into the ground in response to rain (an unlikely circumstance in the Texas Hill Country) or supplemental irrigation. So once you get on the "apply the blood meal" treadmill, you can expect to expend a lot effort, energy, and money until you figure out that "there has got to be a better way".
OPTION 4:
Simulate around-the-clock human presence and activity. A lot of creative energy has been put into this option with decidedly mixed results. Some people collect hair clippings from barbers and spread it around to keep a fresh human scent in the area. That works for a while, but sooner or later, the deer figure out that the scent of human hair does not equate to imminent danger, and they resume nibbling. Similar approaches have been taken using motion sensing lights. The deer are frightened for a week or two by the lights suddenly turning on, but then they become accustomed to the lights and seem to appreciate the help you are giving them in finding the roses. And an unfortunate side effect of the automatic light approach is that most people wake up when the lights go on, because they associate the sudden illumination from burglar lights with burglars. So much for a good night’s sleep.
OPTION 5: (Definitely not recommended)
Application of deadly force. In desperation some people are driven to using "deadly force". You may recall the final minutes of an old classic move called "The Yearling", in which a persistent pet deer came to grief at the business end of a rifle. That approach is extremely effective in individual cases, but deer in the Texas Hill Country rather resemble the Chinese army, and you will probably run out of ammunition before you run out of deer. Also, there can be unfortunate, if not totally unanticipated, consequences when the local Game Warden shows up.
OPTION 6: (Now we are getting somewhere)
Separate the deer from the roses. This is the only solution that I have found that really works. That is why the 6 acres of display garden at the Peaceful Habitations Rose Gardens are surrounded by an 8 foot deer proof fence. Ah, bliss and tranquility! The deer just have to content themselves with trimming the stray canes of climbing roses that venture through the fence. This solution is rather expensive, but it does work and it is a passive, long-term solution. Our fence has been quite effective since 1984.
If an 8 foot deer proof fence is beyond your budget, there are other solutions. Deer do not feel comfortable in confined spaces. They will cheerfully leap a 4 foot fence in a single bound, but if you have two parallel 4 foot fences that are only 3 or 4 feet apart, the deer will not cross them. The reason is that once they jump the first fence, they wind up in a very confined area that is quite frightening to them. So two parallel, closely spaced, low fences work about as well as one high deer proof fence. However, the cost of two low fences is significant, and if you have a gate, it has to be a double gate (one in each fence). Also, since the deer will avoid the area between the two fences, you will have lots of grass and weeds there, so leave enough room for your riding lawnmower and plan your weekends accordingly. All in all, the low fence approach may be more trouble, and may cost more, than it is worth.
Another alternative relies on a devilishly ingenuous invention called the ‘electric fence’. This little device generates pulses of very high voltages (thousands of volts) for very short periods of time (thousandths of a second). You simply string a bare wire suspended by insulators that are attacked to posts, and be sure to route the electric fence where the deer will find it before they reach the roses. The result can be visually entertaining, but most unpleasant for the deer. Furthermore, the structure for the electric fence can be very light and inexpensive. I have used 3/8 inch steel reinforcing rods for posts with some success in the past. However the enclosure must be complete, including walkways and gates. This means you are always carefully stepping over the electric fence or carefully opening and closing a special "gap" to get in and out of the enclosure. But that is a small price to pay for the level of protection that the electric fence affords.
However, I do have one word for the wise. The electric fence is not easily trained to distinguish between you and a deer. If it will ZAP a deer, it will also ZAP you ---- with a smile on its face.
There is an old, and possibly apocryphal, story about a rose lover in deer country who chose the electric fence option. One day while dead heading and pruning his favorite rose, he backed up a little more than usual. Imagine his surprise when his rear end found the electric fence. Why you could hear every word he said all over the county, and --- as for the clippers he was holding at the time --- well, I don’t think that they were ever found.
Enough said?
CONCLUSIONS:
So there you have it. Nothing you can do will convince the deer not to eat your roses. Nothing you can do (legally) will significantly reduce the deer population. Nothing you can do will totally and permanently convince the deer to stay away from a place where they have found their favorite food. So the best solution is a good, big, territorial dog and / or a good fence.
Good luck, and - "Keep on smelling the roses".
Last updated 03/23/2001