Free Deer-Resistant Garden Plans

Four planting plans, each for a specific hard site rather than a generic border. Every one carries dimensions, quantities and spacing, so it can be taken to a nursery and ordered from.

Three are built entirely from plants rated Rarely or Seldom Damaged. One is not, and that is the point of it.

Mailbox garden

Full sun, no irrigation, road salt, snow plough spray and complete exposure to deer moving along the road. Five hardships at once, on the least defended ground you own.

The plan runs a russian sage anchor over catmint and yarrow, with sedum and lamb's ear at the edge and daffodils scattered through. Mound the bed four to six inches so meltwater drains away from the crowns, which on a salted road matters more than any plant choice.

Roadside border

The same hardships over a longer run, plus one that is not horticultural at all.

Traffic sight triangles are a legal constraint, and municipal codes commonly cap planting near a corner at 30 inches above the curb. Under one typical ordinance the owner gets ten days to trim, after which the town may do it and bill them. So the plan is designed to a height ceiling, and the first job is a phone call rather than a nursery visit.

Wall and foundation planting

The narrow strip at the foot of a wall, which is the driest ground on the property because the wall casts a rain shadow. A bed there can stay dry through a week of rain.

Two plans, one for a hot south or west aspect and one for cool north or east, because the same eight feet is a completely different site depending on which way it faces. A wall is also no barrier: browsing runs to about six feet, so anything trained on it is eaten over most of its height.

Rose garden

The exception, and the honest one.

There is no deer-resistant rose. Rutgers rates rugosa, multiflora and hybrid tea in the same tier, and Knock Out's own FAQ states the variety is not deer resistant. Under mule deer, Colorado State rates most roses in its worst category.

So this plan is an enclosure rather than a plant list. It uses the most useful fact in the set: a small enclosure only 50 inches high has excluded deer successfully, where a fence protecting a large area needs eight. A deer will not jump into a space with no visible landing. That is the difference between a garden feature and a stockade.

How to use them

Each plan gives quantities per unit of bed, so scale the repeating elements and hold the proportions. Bed depths and setbacks are minimums rather than suggestions, and the commonest failure is a bed too narrow for roots.

Every plant is in the encyclopedia with its rating, zones and conditions. Check your zone before ordering; several are reliable only in zone 5 and warmer.

Three things apply to all four:

• Autumn planting beats spring where winters allow, so roots establish before the first summer.
• Water weekly through the first summer if you plant in spring. Drought tolerance is a property of an established plant, and this is the commonest reason a plan fails in year one.
• Daffodils, never tulips. Tulips are in the worst Rutgers tier and are the most reliable way to feed deer in spring.

What these plans do not do

None of them makes a garden deer proof, and the ratings behind them come from the Rutgers list, which is practitioner consensus from northern New Jersey rather than a feeding trial. Its own text says no plant is deer proof and that results depend on local populations and weather.

Under heavy pressure in late winter, when fat reserves are lowest, plants two tiers down get browsed anyway. The roadside plan leans on sedum and yarrow for salt tolerance, and neither is top tier. That is a deliberate trade on a site you have already decided you cannot defend.

Where the planting genuinely matters, the answer is a fence, and the rose plan is the version of that argument you can look at.

The design principles behind all four are set out separately, in the order the decisions should be made.