Is Annual Geranium deer resistant?

Sometimes browsed, which surprises people who bought it as deer-resistant bedding. The scented-leaf zonal pelargonium is aromatic enough to put most deer off, but under pressure it gets eaten.

The confusion is in the name. What everyone calls a geranium is Pelargonium, a tender South African plant grown as summer bedding. True hardy Geranium, the cranesbills, is a different genus entirely, perennial to zone 3 or 4, and considerably more deer-resistant.

If you want the reliable version, ask for cranesbill or hardy geranium by name. Bloody cranesbill and the Rozanne types are ignored almost completely and come back every year.

Pelargoniums overwinter indoors easily if you cut them back hard and keep them nearly dry.

Do deer eat geraniums?

Sometimes, and the answer depends on which plant is meant. The bedding geranium, Pelargonium, is rated Occasionally Severely Damaged by Rutgers: scented enough to be passed over in a light year, eaten in a heavy one, buds and soft tips first. NC State's entry for the zonal geranium does not mention deer. The hardy cranesbills, true Geranium, are the ones the deer-resistant lists mean, and bloody cranesbill is on this site under its own name.

Protecting bedding geraniums

They are container plants, and that is the protection. A pot on a porch or in a window box sits inside the zone of human traffic that the third tier depends on; the same plants in a bed at the property line do not. For a bed, the 20 percent egg spray Colorado State rates High, reapplied at about thirty days through the summer, or the decision to plant cranesbill there instead.

Do they come back after browsing?

Usually, from the stem. A pelargonium browsed to the leaf nodes will normally push new shoots below the bite if the base is left intact, and NC State notes the plant can be cut back hard and overwintered dry indoors, which is rougher treatment than a deer gives it. What does not come back is the flush of flowers that was on it, and a plant browsed twice in a summer is a smaller plant by September. NC State's toxicity note is worth the page's own callout: "vomiting, anorexia when consumed in quantity," with cats the most sensitive.