Deer do not eat every garden plant, but there is no dependable list of plants they will never touch. If deer visit your yard, put protection around the plants you most want to keep and choose the rest with some flexibility.
Decide what needs protecting first
The original garden advice here favored a fence, and that remains a practical place to start when you have a planting that gets browsed again and again. A short decorative fence may do little to keep deer out. For a small number of appealing plants, a repellent can also be worth trying; follow its label and expect to keep up with applications. Neither approach makes a garden completely deer-proof.
Hostas are a familiar favorite of browsing deer. If you want to keep them, plan for that before planting a bed full of them. Our hosta article can help you decide where they would be worth the extra attention. You may prefer to save them for a more protected part of the yard.
Try plants deer may pass by
Decorative grasses, ferns, mints and daffodils were among the plants noted in the original article as less appealing to deer. That is a useful starting point, not a promise. The same goes for flowering choices such as lantana, lamb’s ear, Russian sage and snapdragons, and for shrubs such as spirea and daphne. What deer eat can change with the animals, the season and what else is available.
Match those choices to your garden before buying them. A plant that deer leave alone still needs the right place to grow. Our piece on grasses in the landscape looks at one way to bring texture into a bed without relying on flowers alone. If you want summer color, lantana is another of the plants discussed in the archive.
Avoid pushing soft new growth with more fertilizer than the planting needs. Then watch which plants actually get browsed in your yard. That local observation is more useful than treating any “deer resistant” label as a guarantee.
