Yeah. That’s right. It’s been a really tough season for this gardener. (You may have surmised this, given the absolute lack of gardening content here on the blog these past months.) It can all be summed up in one word: deer.
Since becoming a “serious” gardener (well over 20 years now), I’ve had bad years in the garden before . . . generally when something in my life was so personally disruptive that I needed to turn my attention away from the garden. (Life. . .) In those bad years, I always knew I’d work through things and get back to my garden. Eventually.
This year is different. Because it’s not my life that’s disrupting things. This year I’ve actually spent a lot of time wondering . . . why bother with gardening at all?
Things started out really well in my garden this season. I felt organized and energized and ready for the season ahead. I had plans. I had chore lists. I had all the garden optimism and plenty of hope for a good year.
And then the deer hopped my fence. Every day. No matter the obstacles we placed in their way.
Now, we don’t live out in the country where deer naturally roam. We don’t even live on the edge of town. We live right in the city. Our neighborhood borders a small chain of lakes and a creek that meanders through Portage and Kalamazoo, so it’s really lovely and the setting does encourage wildlife, even in town – which I generally really like. But we’re also conveniently located near the intersection of two highways that cut through Michigan. It’s not really a place for deer.
But, boy oh boy . . . do we have deer! In the past few years, the deer population in my neighborhood has exploded. I mean, we’ve always had deer around here, but now they run in packs! We often see as many as 10-15 deer in our yards at once. And they are bold! They come right up to our porches. They hop our fences. They looks us in the eye and hold their ground when we go out to chase them. They are such frequent visitors in our yard now that JoJo doesn’t even bother to bark at them anymore!
And they have eaten everything everywhere. When we walk through our neighborhood, we can see that every landscape and garden has been impacted. Plants are just . . . stems. Shrubs are bare of leaves; just a collection of broken branches. Everything looks diseased . . . but it’s not. It’s just the deer.
I garden to create a lovely place to look at and to live in — but I also garden to attract pollinators and to create a wildlife-friendly space. I have gradually been “giving up” the garden beds in the front of my house (the ones not protected by a fence), and adjusting my “plant palette” to be less attractive to the deer, but I’ve been very comfortable with my “true” garden — my “secret” garden — back behind my fence. But now. . . I even need to re-think that garden space.
I have carefully curated garden beds . . . with something blooming in every season. But not much bloomed in my garden this summer. Not once the deer found the “weak spots” in my fence. As a result, I didn’t see many butterflies — and no caterpillars. Fewer bees, too. By this time in the year, I usually have giant swaths of blooming Autumn Joy sedum swarming with bees. This year? The sedum has been eaten to the ground and there are no swaths. Or bees. My five oak leaf hydrangeas only have about 4 blooms between them this year . . . and because they’ve been chewed on so thoroughly, there will be no blooms next year either (as is the way with oak leaf hydrangeas). I could go on and on. But I’m sure you get the picture.
We did stop the deer-browsing with that horrible Plantskyyd stuff. It does work (quite well, actually) to deter deer from munching. But we didn’t start using it until most of the damage had already been done . . . so it was like closing the barn door after the animals had escaped, y’know? And it needs to be re-applied when there is new growth. So . . . regularly and frequently. (And it’s a yucky chore, too.)
My yard still looks . . . okay. But the devastation has been, well . . . devastating. I didn’t plant anything this year (because why bother) and I didn’t transplant anything this year (because I lost my mojo) and I stopped weeding (because heart not in it). I know that a lot of my perennials WILL come back next year (because our plant friends are resilient), but I need to be ready for them to thrive despite the deer pressure. We are in the process of working with a builder-friend to look into “extending” parts of our fence before winter. And we’ll apply Plantskyyd earlier in the spring next year (yippee). But for right now . . . my heart is just not in it anymore.
And that, my friends, is the sad story of . . . my $hitty garden year.
Sigh.
=====
PS The photos in this post are my surviving dahlias. (Deer love dahlia buds, I’ve discovered . . . especially just as they’re about to bloom.) They’ve been sprayed with Plantskyyd, and hopefully it will deter the deer enough to allow them to continue to bloom. At least for a while.
Oh Kym. I am so so so sorry. We have a borough nearby (where Mark Cuban grew up actually) … well, they had/have very similar deer mobs that eat absolutely everything in their path. A few of years ago, they began a ‘managed cull’ of the deer. They enlisted (hired actually, I think) a group of bow hunters to come at night and selective cull the herd. The meat all goes to a local butcher who then donates it to local food banks. I think this year was the first year that all that work started to pay off. The yards are looking better and the reduction in the deer herd means that their “normal food source” sustained them.
I hope your fence improvements help next year. XO
While we live in a small town on a busy street, our county is quite rural. There are deer all over and it has impacted my landscaping over the years. They even eat roses if they’re hungry enough and I’ve learned not to trim my ivy and leave it for the deer. The county allows for deer hunting in most of the county parks and that has kept the herds manageable, but we still have to be very careful when driving. There are a couple of towns south of us that have had to hire sharpshooters to cull the deer herds. It wasn’t a popular decision, but when lyme disease was rampant along with increased car-deer accidents they had to do something. I hope you find a manageable solution.
I was thinking culling the herd but did not know local laws, ordinances regarding this. Chloe
Well, that’s sad and disheartening. How tall does a fence need to be to keep deer from jumping it? I will have to look that up. I hope that you figure out a way to keep gardening, Kym. It’s so good for you and the planet in so many ways.
This makes me sad, on several levels. I’m sorry.
My heart breaks for you because I know how much joy and fulfillment you get from being a gardener. I hope there are solutions to some of these problems and I hope you are able to implement them and move forward. I’m sorry it was so shitty this year.
Well, yeah, that just sucks… big time. I also wonder about culling the herd… that can’t be great for safety on roadways. I hope you’re able to figure something out to deter the beasts!
I am so sorry because I know how much your garden brings joy to you and to those of use who read your blog. We have had more deer this year too. There are two families who wander through our yard and they each had 3 babies. But my garden does not hold much appeal to them because I don’t grow much that appeals to their taste buds. I was in a similar spot a few years ago with a different garden invasion. For me it was the voles and their destruction made me give up on gardening. I tried everything I could for two seasons and it was just so much work. I am toying with the idea of raised gardening in containers next year because I do miss flowers and color. I hope you find your way around this Kym.
Deer appear in our yard and back hill occasionally, but I think the aroma of three dogs keeps them away. But the rabbits! One year they ate the mini hosta, the next year they left it alone and ate the next hosta in the border. I am so sorry for your bad luck this year. But in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, “Tomorrow is another [year].”
I ‘m sorry for your deer and wish I had a solution. It is the same here in Illinois, the numbers are ridiculous and they don’t scare easily. I took the dog out last night at about 9 and there were several bedded down in my front yard with two standing guard. I was a bit afraid walking my dog past them because they were staring me down and of course, my 14 year old 25 lb dog was pulling to get near them!
That is really a shame. Drought got us this year. Hopefully next year will be better for both our gardens.
I’m so sorry it’s been such a rotten year, Kym. I know how much joy your garden brings you, so I can imagine how disheartening it is. We never had deer on our street until this year (we live in a busy urban area!), but we’ve been seeing them with increased frequency in the neighborhood, so it seems to be a general trend (has anyone checked the deer group chat to see if they’re plotting this?). As far as I can tell, my deer have only eaten one thing, but the bunnies took care of the rest, so I understand the frustration. I hope you’re able to find a fencing solution that will improve things going forward, and I guess we can all take the fall and winter to do our research on plants that the critters won’t eat.
Ugh…:-(
I feel your pain, Kym. It’s so disheartening to look out at a garden that has been eaten to the nubs by deer or rabbits. It takes all the joy out of gardening. I once saw a sign on Etsy that read “Not tonight, deer.” Unfortunately the deer in my area can’t read.
oh Kym, this sucks. I hate it for you, and for the pollinators and butterflies. Sadly, fences don’t seem to work – around here the dominant style is wrought iron with spikes at the top … and the deer jump them (and when they can’t jump high enough they get stuck … and that’s awful, too). I think we need a paradigm shift kind of solution because deterrents aren’t cutting it. anyway, I’m sorry about your garden – you know I only garden vicariously through you (for flowers) and Bonny (for food).
I am so sorry Kym. I know your garden brings you so much joy. I listen to a videocast done by a shepherdess in the middle of Michigan and she also talked about a deep population out of control. Kat’s solution sounds like a good one but that would take a community effort. Some of these critters (deer and squirrels in our area) don’t have the natural predators that used to take care of over population.