Deer Resistant Plants and Flowers
Deer-resistant plants make beautiful and hardy additions to pest-prone gardens and landscapes. Gardeners in rural and semi-rural areas often have to deal with animals invading their gardens. Squirrels dig up bulbs, rabbits eat vegetables, and deer nibble almost everything. Luckily, we have a wide selection of flowering deer-resistant plants.
What Kind of Plants Will Deer Not Eat?
The plants most resistant to browsing deer are those with inedible foliage or highly aromatic flowers. Luckily, there is enough variety among these types that you can find deer-resistant flowering plants suitable for every hardiness zone from 2 to 10 and every sun exposure. There are also plenty of choices in heights, colours and bloom times.
What Deer-Resistant Flowers Should be Planted Each Season?
Deer are especially hungry in the spring, so consider filling your spring garden with deer-resistant Dutch bulbs like hyacinth, daffodils and irises. For the summer, choose plants with feathery foliage and less appetizing blossoms such as poppies, begonias, astilbe, and a variety of coneflowers. Feathery or ruffled flowers also seem to repel deer, so consider plants like queen of the prairie, goatsbeard and sea holly. Prevent deer from grazing in your fall garden with a mix of beautiful dahlias, toad lilies and hyssops.
What are Some of the Most Popular Deer-Resistant Plants?
Many popular deer-resistant plants are highly scented, particularly alliums, sages, and similar plants, such as salvia, Russian sage, catmint, and lavender. These flowering plants all have gorgeous flowers and fragrant foliage that bees and butterflies love.
Don't despair when you find that deer have discovered your garden. Plant some of these beauties where the deer like to browse and watch them turn up their noses.
Gardening With Deer-Resistant Plants
Gardening can be quite a challenge with deer around, but intelligent plant selection can enable you to have a gorgeous garden even in areas with high deer populations. With a delightfully wide range of deer resistant plants to choose from, the act of deer-proofing your garden actually allows you the opportunity to experiment with plants and combinations you might not have tried before!
Deer can find their way through some of the cleverest barriers and fencing mechanisms and will consume almost every plant they can reach, especially when food is scarce or their numbers are too high. However, they do tend to avoid plants that are toxic, have a strong fragrance, leathery texture and fuzzy or prickly foliage. That gives you plenty of amazingly beautiful, colorful and aromatic options to pick from! The rich scent of plants like Bee Balm, Sage and Salvia makes them a wonderful option for your deer-proof garden. Deer are also likely to steer clear of Daffodils, Hellebores, and other plants with toxic foliage, along with the hairy/fibrous foliage of Yarrow, Peonies, Elephant Ears, and most Irises. Check our selection of deer deterring plants for the most suitable and attractive options for your garden.