I have mixed feelings about the Perennial Plant Association’s plant pick of 2012. I mean, I love it and all. Jack Frost Brunnera (Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’) is one of those shade plants that seems to thrive wherever you stick it, looks elegant and classy in a variety of gardening themes, and is unusual enough that when I plant it, clients say marvelous things about my fine taste for having chosen such an aesthetically-pleasing plant.

That, of course, is all over now.

Remember Geranium ‘Rozanne’? She was a lovely, exotic, unusual beauty too, in her time. But then she won 2008 Plant of the Year, and it changed her. Soon she was seen in parking lots, cavorting with the trashiest of Stella d’ Oro daylily/ Crimson Pygmy barberry combinations.

And what about golden Japanese forest grass? Now that was a looker. Went in English perennial beds, modern minimalist combinations, and ran the gamut in between. Until its gracious good looks and amicable growth habits landed it the 2009 Plant of the Year award, and it too became common.

Don’t get me wrong. These are some of my favorite plants! It’s right they should receive such an honor. But the last time I wrote about my darling ‘Rozanne’, I received mocking – mocking - emails from pals in the trade, saying, “oh, Rozanne is sooo 2007″.

So it was with sentimental feelings that I read about Jack Frost’s latest accolades. Yes, he deserves it. A finer specimen of shade perennial-hood is hard to find. But for folks in the trade, this award signals a fall from grace of kinds.

Oh, we’ll still plan his curved spiderwebbed foliage into our shady garden corners. But after this year of promotion and popularity, it will be with a kind of ironic sadness. A feeling that we knew him way back when he was a rare little shade-lover, still needing a champion to urge him into the hands of uncertain homeowners. When we see him in the Target parking lot, we’ll know he’s really made it.

Will he still be our kind of plant? Only 2013 will tell.

If you invite him into your home, just don’t let him hit the Miracle-Gro too hard. Excess fertilizer can get him into trouble with the snails and slugs, and you know how much fun that can be.

Photos courtesy the Perennial Plant Association.

Photo at left: Mackerel showing his love of Phormium ‘Black Adder’

October always makes me want to curl up with my gardening books and highlight the deliciously wicked black plants found within. But you don’t need to limit black and dark plants to Halloween. They can fit into pretty much any garden scheme, from English cottage, Japanese, tropical, woodland, or any style of gardening you’ve got going on.

Looking for some goth gardening inspiration?

My latest column over at Landscaping Network brings exactly that, in Deep Dark Plants for the Halloween Garden. In it, I share tips for how to harmonize dark-foliaged plants with the rest of your garden, as well as some top picks for container gardeners and in-the-ground gardeners.

Last year, I was similarly smitten, and went back to my goth-girl roots for an article about my favorite Gothy Black Plants for the Garden.

This year, I tackled the design end of things with my post for the Garden Designers Roundtable, Dark Designs.

Introducing dark plants into the garden can definitely take some cojones. They’re such an unexpected addition that they always attract attention, and while it’s easy to combine black with other colors when we’re getting dressed, it can take a bit more nerve to create long-lasting combinations with black in the garden. Read the article for some quick tips on getting started.

Then, two of my pals have also caught the black plants bug. Rebecca Sweet shows off photos of her ten favorite black plants, and Fern Richardson has a very helpful list of black plants for container gardeners. Go on over and check them out!

Pictured: a normal strawberry, ‘Rugen Improved’ alpine, ‘Yellow Alpine’, and ‘Golden Alexandria’ berries

Alpine strawberries. Seriously, have you guys tried these things? They’re like little red garden crackberries. They’re definitely one of my favorite things to grow at home, not the least because you can’t actually buy them in stores. Mine start going downhill as soon as they’re picked, and last at most a day or two in the fridge.

But the flavor! Tart, rich, and sweet. Fall-apart tender and soft, nothing like those woody things you buy at Safeway.

I just wrote an ode to them over at the Christian Science Monitor, and talk about a few of the varieties available:

Alpine Strawberries: Perfect in Foliage and in Fruit

And imagine my pleasure to see that Stevie over at Garden Therapy has just posted about how to save the seeds from alpine strawberries so you can grow them yourself. They’re about $4 a pop at the nursery, so growing your own from seed sounds like a marvelous idea to me, once you’ve gotten a good selection of varieties growing.

Jessi over at Garden Fowl is also a fan, and points out that the white variety has runners, unlike some of the other varieties of alpine strawberry available. My ‘Golden Alexandria’ from Log House Plants is also forming some runners, so I’ll be excited to have more of them in my garden next year.

Have you tried growing alpines? Are you all as smitten as I am?

Recently I wrote about how to design a Mediterranean garden, but I left out one major component – which plants to choose!

I just did a follow-up article over at the Christian Science Monitor which discusses just that. And yes, there are more photos of that lovely, lovely garden.  Head on over to read more.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the title is accurate. And no, I’m not talkin’ about no stinkin’ cherry tomatoes, either. Real, live tomatoes big enough to slice and put in a sandwich!

If you live in Humboldt, you know what an achievement this is. Our foggy, cool summers don’t usually allow much of anything in the tomato department – if I get a few bowlfuls of cherry tomatoes, I’m usually pretty pleased. But this year, the bar has been raised.

Earlier in the season, Log House Plants sent me three of their grafted tomatoes to test out in the garden. (Learn more about grafted tomatoes here and here.) Being a realist, and also prone to moping about at the slightest disappointment, I told them to please only send me grafted cherry tomatoes, as there was no way in hell a proper slicing tomato would do anything but break my heart.

With great confidence in their tomatoes, they ignored my pessimism and sent a ‘Big Beef’ (true to its name), a medium-sized Siberian variety called ‘Sasha’s Altai’ (thanks to Amy Stewart for uncovering the story behind it), and my very favorite cherry tomato, ‘Sungold’. I snorted when I saw the ‘Big Beef’, but the plants were so robust that I put a little faith in the process and popped them all in.

Well, a few months later, these behemoths are out-pacing every other tomato plant I’ve ever had. I grew some normal old ‘Sungold’ plants to compare, and while they’re doing pretty well for Humboldt, they’re only about two feet tall, while the grafted tomatoes are about 5 feet tall and busting out of their tomato cages.

I planted everything too late, as last year we had a freak June frost which made me paranoid of planting too early, so I am just now starting to pick real, live cherry tomatoes from the grafted ‘Sungold’ (the normal ‘Sungolds’ are still unproductive). And today was the day I ‘d been waiting for: the ‘Sasha’s Altai’ gave me my very first-ever homegrown slicing tomato. Wow!

While the ‘Big Beef’ is putting on tons of tomatoes, it’s too soon to tell whether this will be a bumper crop of one of my favorite foods, green tomatoes (OMG – fried green tomatoes – heavenly!), or whether they’ll turn a delightful stoplight color suitable for dousing in fresh basil, fresh mozzarella balls, and possibly a bit of balsamic. I’ll keep you updated.

Next year, I’m definitely shelling out for some grafted tomatoes (they were about $13 at our local nurseries), as well as Log House’s newest star, grafted basil. Yeah, you heard me right. I’ve been growing delicate little basils indoors under lights because the great outdoors is too chilly and cold for their basilly little selves to handle. I’m guessing one of those grafted ones would actually give me outdoor basil, and I can’t wait for next summer so I can try!

Anyone else try out the new grafted tomatoes? I’m keen to hear whether your experience has been as good as mine has so far.

As an organic landscaper, I’ve long been annoyed by those weakling, disease-prone roses that are pesticide junkies from day one.

Yet when roses are done right, the colors, fragrance, and luxuriant flowers are hard to resist. They have that old-fashioned, secret garden-type appeal that makes me feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside.

That’s why I’ve been such a fan of the newer landscape roses like Knockouts, which need nearly no care, can be pruned by inexperienced hands with decent results, and don’t need spraying. I’ve even had luck with them in tough, windy conditions and poor soils, if they’re given regular irrigation.

But sometimes you don’t have room for a bountiful 5′ behemoth in your garden beds, and just want a little color and fragrance tumbling along a border or spilling over the sides of a pot. That’s where these new Drift Roses fit in.

They’re about a third the size of Knockouts and come in a similarly cheerful array of colors. They have a light, pleasing fragrance and are easy do-ers even for beginning gardeners, so long as you give them good sunshine and summer water to get them well-established.

You don’t even need to deadhead them much, as they’re self-cleaning – the petals drop off the rose once they’re finished, so you can clean up the deadheads at your leisure to encourage re-bloom, rather than rushing out to deal with a mess of guilt-inducing brown petals.

Since they’re relatively new, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to test them out, but I’m already inspired by the glossy deep green foliage and attractive form.

Happily, Brighter Blooms Nursery has been so kind as to offer you all the chance to try one out! Three lucky readers will get their very own drift rose, one winner for the Icy Drift Rose, one for the Peach Drift Rose, and one for the Red Drift Rose (photos above).

Want to win? Of course you do! Just leave a comment below and I’ll hold a random draw for three lucky winners on Monday August 29th at noon Pacific time. US only. Good luck!

EDIT: Big congrats to Jayme, Cindy and Carri, who have each won a Drift Rose! Thanks to Brighter Blooms for sponsoring this giveaway.

(Click any photo to view larger.)

Gardening in soggy soil can be tough enough without the added challenge of shade. While the usual suspects in such conditions – ferns, iris, astilbe and hosta – are beautiful, if you’re looking for a more interesting or architectural planting, it can be tough to find varieties that will suit. Here are six under-used plants for shady sites that are damp or somewhat boggy.

Midwinter fire dogwood, Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’, shines in boggy part shade. The golden stems tipped with orange stand out boldly against evergreens in winter, and in summer it’s an unassuming but attractive shrub with green foliage.

It reaches 5 feet tall and wide, and should be pruned each year to encourage lots of new stems to grow, since the new stems are the colorful ones. Simply remove 1/3 of the oldest stems at the base each year to keep it looking good.

You can use the stems you trim out in flower arrangements or by themselves in a vase for an elegant look. (Hardy to zone 5.)

Spice bush, Calycanthus occidentalis, is a California native shrub which prefers partial shade and grows to 8′ tall and wide. In full shade, its habit is slightly more twining and is a good candidate for espaliering, while in sunnier spots, it forms a sturdy shrub.

The vivid blooms have an aroma like that of a wine barrel – a fruity-musk scent with a hint of oak. The contrast between the bright flower and lush green leaf is a welcome addition to a forested area, since so many shade-tolerant plants have pastel-colored blooms. Its foliage smells spicy and herbal when crushed, a quality that deer find most unfortunate. (Hardy to zone 7.)

Spiny bear’s breech, Acanthus spinosus, has glossy deep green leaves with prickly tips. If you’re bored of the usual bear’s breech, Acanthus mollis, this is a much more interesting species that’s just as easy to grow.

It reaches 2-3′ tall and wide, and in summer, bold spikes of purple and white rise above the foliage. The blooms make long-lasting cut flowers in a vase. It’s happy in full to part shade, and looks great near water features or in urns. Just don’t plant it next to a pathway! (Hardy to zone 6.)

Hardy impatiens, Impatiens omeiana, is an easy, spreading groundcover with hints of red on the stems and a bold streak of variegation down the center of each leaf.

While I’ve never personally seen them bloom, rumor has it they have an orchid-like yellow blossom in late summer that highlights the creamy-gold venation on each plant.

They reach about 1′ tall, 2′ wide. (Hardy to zone 6.)

Sparkler sedge, Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’, is a versatile shade plant which takes both wet and dry soil with ease. It has the look of a bamboo plant that erupted into fireworks, and what you see is just its foliage, not the flowers.

So long as it isn’t burnt by direct sunshine, the creamy-white stripes make a gorgeous show next to other variegated plants or against green or silver plants. It reaches about 2′ tall and wide. (Hardy to zone 7.)

Red hook sedge, Uncinia uncinata ‘Red’, is my new Halloween plant crush. It takes partial or dappled shade with ease, and in late summer gets these lovely brownish-black flower spikes that look all wicked next to the glossy orange foliage.

These will occasionally re-seed through the garden, but the seedlings aren’t too plentiful and are easy to pull out, so I’d consider them a benefit (free plants!) rather than a pest. 18″ tall. (Hardy to zone 8.)

Want to see what other garden designers around the country have to say about shade? Check out the other members of the Garden Designers Roundtable who are contributing posts about shade. Margaret Roach of A Way to Garden is our special guest, so be sure to make her feel welcome!

Margaret Roach : A Way To Garden : Hudson Valley, NY

Andrew Keys : Garden Smackdown : Boston, MA

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ

Planting for deer can be hard sometimes. You read all the books, buy “deer-resistant” plants, and the buggers still munch everything to the ground and give you that blank-eyed “what? I’m a deer!” stare when you shake your fist at them. No, it doesn’t always go as smoothly as the books would have you believe.

But some plants are more deer-resistant than others. And the types of plants I’ll discuss below are generally left unbothered, even in that initial “hmm, it’s a new thing, is that tasty?” stage. And even if you only used the exact set of species I’m suggesting below, there are so many colors and textures available of these types of plants that you could create any number of design schemes from them. Shall we start?

Ornamental grasses:

I have never seen a deer eat ornamental grasses. That’s not to say they don’t do it, but I think the fact that grasses are pretty fibrous and not too high in moisture makes them an unattractive snack. Plus, there are generally a lot of softer grasses to eat out in the wild, so for most deer, the idea of traipsing into your yard, with all the weird sounds and smells, to eat something they can chomp in the relative safety of the wild just seems like a dumb idea to them.

You can try any ornamental grass, but the driest, most fibrous ones will be the most deer-resistant choices.

(Click the photos to see them larger.)

From left:

Silver Spear Astelia, Astelia chathamica ‘Silver Spear’, is a great plant for full sun or partial shade (4 hours or more of direct sunshine). The silvery-blue leaves shimmer in the light and the plant has a bold, architectural look. I adore these with black plants or black berries. 4′ tall by 5′ wide.

Cape Rush, Chondropetalum tectorum, is an evergreen rush with deep green foliage and dark brown papery sheaths at the stem joints. It has a strong presence in the landscape, yet rustles in the wind and looks airy rather than poky. Can take wet soils, and reaches 5′ tall by 7′ wide. Full sun to partial shade.

Burgundy Festival Grass, Cordyline ‘Festival Burgundy’, has a finer appearance than most Phormiums do, yet reaches a similar size in the landscape, about 5-6′ around. They prefer well-drained soil and full sun, but are otherwise easygoing plants that go well with almost anything. The white flower floofs bring a gentle textural contrast to this wide-leaved plant.

Red Hook Sedge, Uncinia uncinata ‘Red’, is an evergreen grass that can take damp, boggy soils or regular landscape conditions with ease. It’s as happy in full sun as it is in partial shade, and the black flowerspikes add a fun contrast to the glossy orange foliage. To 18″ tall and wide.

Japanese Forest Grass, Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, is one that my landscape designer friends are all groaning about right now. Yes, guys, you may have seen this grass once or twice before. But the reason it’s so popular is because it’s of the awesome.

It’s happy in sun or shade on the coast (inland peeps should use it in shadier spots), has a soft appearance and cheerful color that goes with anything, and it’s easy to grow. To 18″ tall and about 4′ wide; you can plant them in gorgeously broad swathes with other shade-loving perennials or shrubs.

Native plants:

Much as deer don’t actually need to be smart to live long and happy lives, they aren’t stupid either. They’re not going to brave your dogs and toddlers to eat something they can get down the road with a lot less stress.

While natives aren’t universally disgusting to deer, they just don’t seem to hold enough appeal to go out of their way for. And since deer are creatures of habit, it’s a very good thing indeed if they find your landscape boring.

That’s not to say you should find your landscape boring! Designing with natives is like designing with any other type of plant – the end result reflects the designer more than the plant. Choose natives for their shape, texture and colors, and feel free to experiment with varieties with different colored flowers or variegated foliage.

You’ll have the best success with deer-resistance if you go for plants that are actually found locally to you. Look at what’s growing naturally and choose exciting varieties of those plants. These are a few natives to my Northern Cali area.

From left:

California lilac, Ceanothus ‘Ray Hartman’, is a large shrub or small tree which can be purchased in a multi-stemmed form or trained with a single tree trunk. They like good drainage and full sun, and will feed many happy pollinators with their flowers, and birds with their seeds later in the season.

Evergreen Huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, is a great standby plant for Pacific Northwest gardens. It loves our redwood forests and feeds many kinds of wildlife, even providing nesting spots and cover for birds. The black berries are pleasantly shiny, and they’re edible to humans as well as birds.

Redwood sorrel, Oxalis oregana, is a sturdy groundcover that’s almost TOO easy to grow. Only way you can f*** this one up is by planting it right next to some delicate beauty who won’t appreciate being overwhelmed by it.

But if you have a shady area that nothing will grow in, try establishing a section of sorrel as a groundcover and let this lovely plant take over. It will take somewhat dry shade once established and can tolerate root competition from redwoods and other vigorous plants.

Douglas iris, Iris douglasiana, comes in a variety of flower colors and shapes and is an easy landscape plant. It’s happiest in partial shade, but is forgiving of both too much sun and too much shade once established. The yellow-maroon one above is a Pacific Coast hybrid.

Variegated California lilac, Ceanothus ‘Diamond Heights’, is a low-growing golden groundcover which reaches about 6″ tall and 5′ wide. I’ve never seen one bloom in the years I’ve grown them, but they make a cheerful evergreen groundcover for areas with good drainage.

Heathers of every stripe:

Summer- and winter-blooming Erica, large-flowered Daboecia with its long bloom season, and the wild foliage colors and interesting habits of Calluna give heaths and heathers a lot of versatility in the garden. They’re evergreen, prefer acid soil and heavy applications of compost and mulch when planted, but are otherwise unfussy plants for a sunny spot.

From left:

Silver Scotch heather and bright pink Scotch heather, Calluna vulgaris ‘Velvet Fascination’ and ‘Dark Beauty’, are late summer- to early fall-blooming plants which reach about 2′ tall and wide. Like all Scotch heathers, they need yearly pruning right after bloom to stay looking full.

White Irish heath, Daboecia cantabrica ‘Alba’, has crisp white blooms against deep green evergreen foliage. Irish heaths take more shade than most heaths and heathers, which generally prefer sun. They bloom from spring through fall, and if they get a bit ratty I give them a light shear in midsummer to encourage them to stay bushy and full. They get about 2′ tall and 3-4′ wide when happy.

Sister Anne Scotch heather, Calluna vulgaris ‘Sister Anne’, has soft grey-green foliage that spreads in a tight, low mound. While many of the super-low heathers give me performance issues or don’t seem as full as the upright varieties, ‘Sister Anne’ has a vigorous habit that always looks good.

Firefly Scotch heather, Calluna vulgaris ‘Firefly’, is a chameleon in the landscape. With bronze-orange foliage in summer that becomes vivid brick-red in winter, it looks great with grasses or herbs, or next to stonework. The mauve flowers in late summer are sparse and frankly unimpressive; I think they clash and often trim them off to enjoy the pure statement the foliage color makes.

Arielle Irish heath, Daboecia cantabrica ‘Arielle’, has the same large blooms and deep green foliage as other Irish heaths, with brilliant magenta blossoms spring through fall. It reaches about 10″ tall by 2′ wide, making it somewhat more petite than other Irish heaths.

Herbs and others with fragrant foliage:

Deer don’t really approve of strongly-flavored plants. Things like thyme, rosemary, and sage don’t hold the same appeal for them as they do for us. So as a rule of thumb, if you’ve chosen an herb or herb relative, and the foliage is thick, sappy, hairy, or highly fragrant, the deer probably won’t mess with it.

The caveat here is that once these guys are established (water in the first 2-3 summers), you should avoid giving them any more water or fertilizer than they really need, because the lusher the growth, the more diluted the scented oils become. A jolt of miracle-gro could make them soft and tasteless, and absolutely delicious to deer. Shade has the same effect; herbs should be positioned in direct sunshine.

From left:

Wormwood, Artemisia, has long been known for its place in absinthe, where it adds a delicious herbal note. Most artemisias are fast-growing and can be pruned vigorously to bare wood once a year to keep them compact. ‘Powis Castle’ is the most common garden variety.

Jerusalem sage, Phlomis fruticosa, grows quickly to 5′ tall and wide. It has masses of blooms in spring, then comes back with an additional show in late summer. The one thing I hate about them is that their leaf undersides have a thick hairy substance on them, so when I prune them, I am generally hacking like an old smoker within a few minutes. But hey, wear a mask and it’s a pretty cool shrub.

The Vick’s Vapo-Rub plant, AKA Australian Mint Bush or Prostanthera rotundifolia, smells like a pleasantly minty stoner. Once you get used to the pungent undertone of marijuana, the minty herbal topnotes are actually quite nice-smelling, and most people don’t find the fragrance of the foliage objectionable. But the deer obviously don’t go in for that kind of thing.

This is a fast-growing shrub to about 6′ around, and it doesn’t take pruning well. But if you give it a bit of room, it has a gracefully loose upright habit, attractive deep green leaves, and has the sweetest covering of purple blooms in late spring. It’s also evergreen, so makes a great fast-growing low screen.

Lion’s tail, or Leonotis leonurus, is a cheerful orange fall bloomer that seems to go with most types of planting. Mediterranean themes, cottage gardens, and colorful foliage displays all look good with this plant. It gets about 5′ tall and 4′ wide. There’s a white version called ‘Alba’, but as Amy Stewart points out, it’d be a bit of a disappointment to turn a lovely cheerful plant like this into a ghostly thing with no color. Just wouldn’t feel right.

Catmint and golden oregano, Nepeta x faassenii and Oreganum vulgare ‘Aureum’, make a natural pairing. Both reach about 18″ tall and 3′ wide, both look particularly fresh and bloomy around mid-summer, and both are easy to grow in a garden with some sun.

You can use golden oregano in the same way as normal oregano, and catmint’s pretty useful too, that is, if you like cats. I have trouble pruning them each year in my garden, because as soon as I crush a bit of catmint foliage, someone’s always twining around my hedgers and purring.

Ferns:

What more need be said of ferns? They’re lovely shade plants, look great massed, don’t clash with anything, and if given regular water to get established, they’re easygoing plants that are hard to screw up.

From left:

Giant chain fern, Woodwardia fimbriata, is a Pacific Northwest native to 4-5′ tall. I’ve had success with it under redwoods and other trees; it seems to do well even when competing for nutrients. It also performs well in boggy conditions. It doesn’t enjoy frost, though, so keep it close to trees and shrubs to protect it from winter’s worst.

Tassel fern, Polystichum polyblepharum, is my favorite fern ever. It’s got an elegant shape and a very nice shine to the leaves, and the deep green in tinged with a gentle olive tone that looks so classy next to traditional shade perennials. Looks great potted, too.

Holly fern, Cyrtomium falcatum,  is all architectural and chic. No fluffy softness from this fern, no way, it’s all piercings and Harleys and leather. It fits right in with black plants and broody burgundies.

Autumn fern, Dryopteris erythrosora, seems to have its seasons confused with its orangey new growth in spring. No matter, it’s adorable and is a great way of continuing an orange or bronze theme into the shady part of your garden beds. This is one of the few ferns that will tolerate a half day of sunshine, so it’s good one for the edges of your shade planting.

Alaskan fern, Polystichum setiferum, is all frou-frou fluffiness. If ferns seem too stiff or too boldly-outlined for you, Alaskan fern may be your best bet. It’s surprisingly tough; I have seen one sited next to the bottom of a downspout, where it’s ignored and unirrigated in summer and deluged in winter.

Don’t forget to read the basic tips for dealing with deer, since even with deer-resistant plantings, it’s important to follow a few guidelines to make sure you have success.

What’s worked in your deer garden? Let me know in the comments below!

Let’s be clear: gardening with deer can be frustrating. You read all the books, plant all the right plants, and those hungry mowing machines just tear through your new deer-resistant plantings like they’re candy! And then leave poops on your lawn to further taunt you.

They’re cute; I’ll give deer that. But they’re creatures of habit, and they’re not that hard to anticipate. Today I’ll give you a few tips to reduce the likelihood that they’ll eat your garden to the ground, and then next week I’ll share a list of plants that grow easily, look great together, and that the deer won’t eat. In short; plantings for deer that you can’t f*** up. Allright, on to the tips!

Spray new plants with deer repellent

First, deer are curious. They’re like a lot of college students – they’ll try anything once. So anytime you plant something new that is not absolutely, totally, 100% deer-resistant (like, you know, rocks), spray it down with deer repellent for the first six weeks.

Bonus tip: every time you run out of repellent, get a new brand. They all work fairly well. You don’t want the deer deciding that maybe they do actually like a salad dressing of rotten eggs and cayenne, thankyouverymuch.

Get rid of the candy

Deer are creatures of habit. So they walk their same paths every week, they eat their favorite plants, and they nibble anything easy to reach along the way. You know what makes a favored path? Candy! Delicious, delicious deer candy.

So those few roses that you can’t bear to get rid of are actually drawing the deer into your garden. Deer might not show up just for the pansy flowers or the Japanese anemones, but since they’re there already for the roses, why yes, they will just have a nibble. Thanks!

You know what this means, right? You must be brutal. Do a quick evaluation of what is eaten every dadgum week, and get rid of it. Give it to your sister, compost it; it doesn’t matter what you do with it, but it can’t stay there.

Once you’ve put the deer on a no-candy diet, do a six-week course of repellents or use motion-sensing sprayers like the Scarecrow to further break their habit of using your garden as a grocery store. Once they’ve found that your neighbors have some delicious plants too, they may just stay away.

Stay ever vigilant

Deer have babies every year, who don’t yet know how gross your hellebore flowers are. And as for grownup deer, well, let’s just say having a brain the size of a baseball doesn’t make for a great memory. They’ll absentmindedly nibble stuff they’ve already deemed inedible. And when times get tough, they’ll eat a baseball mitt if it keeps them going.

So you’ve got to keep an eye on things, and as soon as you notice any nibbling or issues, pull out the motion-sensing sprayer to startle them, or dig out a repellent spray, and try to convince them as fast as possible that your garden is just a totally uncool place to hang out. Don’t let them get into a habit of visiting your garden, because if you do, they’ll be a lot harder to get rid of again.

Chill out

Lastly, don’t take the deer personally. Really, aside from the fact that they spend their entire day eating roses and have the intelligence of a boot, they’re just like us. They want to get by, eat some good food, have kids, and enjoy a gentle and pleasant day hanging out by the stream with their families.

It’s nuthin’ personal when they eat your plants. They don’t have the option of heading down to Whole Foods and picking up some organic rosebuds as they’d surely prefer. So if you feel your blood start to boil at evidence of their grazing – chill out, have a beer, and do some zen-like deep breathing or something. They’re just plants; they’ll probably grow back, and when we die, we can’t take our nice gardens with us. We gotta be, like, philosophical about these things, or we’ll turn into grumps.

Stay tuned for the second installment, Deer-Resistant Plants You Can’t F*** Up, coming Friday.

Want to read more?

The Scarecrow: Motion-Sensing Sprayers that Scare Deer and Small Children

My review on Amazon of the new book, 50 Deer-Resistant Plants by Ruth Rogers Clausen

Every article about deer-resistant plants I’ve written here

My latest post over at the Christian Science Monitor garden blog Diggin’ It is about my favorite types of variegated rhododendrons. I’m lucky enough to have a rhododendron specialty nursery in my community, so in addition to the horrible, boring rhodies seen in parking lots, we also have access to some exotic varieties with glossy foliage, unusual flower colors, and of course variegation, which really brightens up a shady area.

Here are some photos to tease you…

From top: ‘Goldflimmer’, ‘Superflimmer’, ‘President Roosevelt’, and ‘Unique Variegated’. Photos courtesy Don Wallace of Singing Tree Gardens.

So, head on over to the Christian Science Monitor to read more about these tough woodland beauties!

Want to read more about Rhododendrons?

Bulletproof Rhododendrons for the Seacoast and Other Tough Spots

Rhododendrons: Little-Known Favorites for Winter

Gardening Under Redwoods: Rhododendrons and More