Is Garden Rose (Knock Out) deer resistant?

Thorns do not stop deer. That is the single most useful thing to know about roses in deer country, because the assumption that they do costs people entire beds.

What gets taken is the soft growth: buds just before they open, and the tender new canes in spring. A bush stripped in April will often push again, but the flush is lost and repeated browsing weakens the plant over a season.

Rugosa roses hold up better than most, being genuinely dense and viciously prickly rather than decoratively thorny, and their foliage is coarse enough that deer lose interest. For everything else in a garden with real pressure, plan on repellent from the moment growth starts in spring, or fencing, and start before the first bite rather than after.

Do deer eat roses?

Yes, and the prickles are no deterrent. NC State's entry for Rosa lists white-tailed deer and cottontail rabbit under the plant's problems, and its one concession to defense is that "using larger, pricklier species as hedges can provide some security." Rutgers rates the garden rose Occasionally Severely Damaged. The sharp structures are prickles rather than true thorns, in NC State's wording, and a deer's lips and tongue are tougher than either.

When deer take roses

Bud swell in spring, when the new canes are soft, and again at every flush of buds through the season. A repeat-blooming rose browsed in April pushes a second set of shoots; a once-blooming old rose browsed at the same moment has lost the year, because its buds were on last season's wood.

Protecting roses from deer

Start the egg spray when the first leaves unfold, not after the first bite; Colorado State rates the 20 percent mix High and gives it about thirty days before reapplying, which through a rose season means six or seven applications. For a specimen, a cylinder of welded wire five feet tall and wide enough to clear the canes. For a hedge, rugosa, for the reasons above. For a bed that has to flower every year regardless, a fence rather than a bottle.

Will a browsed rose come back?

A repeat bloomer usually rebranches below the bite within weeks and flowers on the new growth; a plant browsed three or four times in a season is visibly smaller and flowers less the following year. Cut ragged stubs back to a clean bud. Deer tear rather than cut, and a torn cane end dies back further than a pruned one.

Are Knock Out roses deer resistant?

No more than any other rose. Nothing consulted here rates the Knock Out group separately from the genus, and NC State's entry for the group, the roses sold as carefree, says it in one sentence: "Roses are susceptible to damage from rabbits and deer." The disease resistance they were bred for, blackspot in particular, is real and is what the name refers to; deer were not part of the breeding. Rutgers rates the genus Occasionally Severely Damaged and a Knock Out carries that tier with the rest. What the group does have is vigor. NC State puts it at 3 to 4 feet, flowering spring through fall and needing less pruning than most roses, so a browsed Knock Out has more growth to come back from than a hybrid tea and flowers again on the new wood the same season. That is recovery, not resistance.