got deer? — deer resistant plants

While it's true that deer will eat anything if they are hungry enough, a good landscape designer will be able to advise you about plants that are effectively deer resistant — mainly because they are not the deer's first choice in an area where food plants are plentiful for them.

Deer are increasing their range, and sometimes it seems like they are everywhere. Annual crop loss to deer is estimated to be between 16 and 30 million dollars. In this area, where we have large numbers of deer, homeowners wage a constant battle to keep their foliage intact and avoid becoming a deer smorgasbord. If you don't want to resort to high fences, electric fences, or chemical repellants, your best defense is to install deer resistant plants. There is a wide variety of such deer resistant plants that we can install on your property, including the following:

Herbaceous Plants

  • monkshood
  • doll's eyes
  • giant purple hyssop
  • small agrimony
  • wild onion/leek
  • blue star
  • big bluestem
  • wild columbine
  • Jack-in-the-pulpit
  • goat's beard
  • wild ginger
  • milkweed, butterflyweed
  • New England aster
  • aromatic aster
  • blue false indigo
  • black cohosh
  • Virgin's-bower
  • tickseed
  • rose coreopsis
  • fringed bleeding-heart
  • flowering spurge
  • wood geranium
  • Helen's flower
  • swamp rose-mallow
  • blue flag iris
  • twin-leaf
  • dense blazing star
  • great blue lobelia
  • monkey flower
  • wild bergamot
  • switch grass
  • beardtongue
  • blue wood phlox
  • creeping phlox
 
  • obedient plant
  • may-apple
  • Jacob's ladder
  • black-eyed Susan
  • skullcap
  • goldenrods
  • skunk-cabbage
  • blue vervain
  • culver's root
  • many species of fern

Trees and Shrubs

  • maple
  • service berry
  • birch
  • Carolina allspice
  • hornbeam
  • summersweet
  • leatherwood
  • beech
  • ash
  • honeylocust
  • witchhazel
  • Shrubby St. John's wort
  • Great St. John's wort
  • fetterbush
  • spicebush
  • sweet gum
  • trumpet honeysuckle
  • magnolia
  • bayberry
  • sourgum
  • oak (however, acorns do attract deer!)
  • viburnum

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P.O. Box 434, Malvern, PA 19355, jamiemilden@gmail.com, 610-476-7086

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