Category Archives: Gardening in Connecticut

Garden Designers Roundtable ~ Gardening with Deer

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This month on Garden Designers Roundtable, we explore the topic of Gardening with Deer. Rather than discuss deer-resistant plants, types of fencing or books that deal with the subject, all worthwhile topics, I thought I’d look at design strategies you can use — regardless of where you garden — to help make your garden less inviting to deer.

A Little Secret & A Balancing Act

White-tail deer in Stamford, CT

I think they already know the secret...

Here’s a secret no one wants to tell you — no plant species is totally immune to deer browsing. When natural food sources are scare, deer will eat anything. You can try to exclude, deter, spray, scare and confuse them all you want. But the cold hard truth for most gardeners is that if there are deer in your neighborhood, they will eventually find their way into your garden.

Like most other gardening-related topics, dealing with deer in your garden is a delicate balancing act that demands each gardener find their own comfort zone along a continuum. Some gardeners may decide to spend thousands of dollars to fence in their entire property (be careful…I’ve seen them damage a garden that is ‘protected’ by 8′ fence) while others may throw down their bottles of Liquid Fence in frustration and decide it’s simply not worth the time, trouble, or expense.

Deer in garden in Stamford, CT

On the way to the buffet...

Most of us fall somewhere along that continuum. Keep in mind, none of these design strategies are fool-proof but they can help you create a beautiful garden with a wider palette of plants that will not be routinely devoured by deer.

Also, some of these design suggestions for dealing with deer in your garden are not exactly wildlife-friendly. So if you’re like me, and consider your garden a haven for most wildlife, just keep that continuum in mind and decide what will work for you, in your garden.

Designing Around Deer

♦ Plant more native plants. Studies in Connecticut show deer tend to prefer exotic ornamentals over native plants. Regardless of where you garden, chances are pretty good, the same is true.

♦ Use highly deer-resistant plants further away from your house and along deer pathways. Site those plants that deer consistently browse proof closer to house or areas that pets may frequent

♦ Deer don’t like to jump into an area that they can’t clearly see. Plant tall deer-resistant evergreens near property lines or deer pathways. Take away the landing pad.

♦ Consider walling off certain small areas of your garden, such as intimate seating areas, dining areas, and play spaces. This should keep the deer out and allow you to expand your plant palette. Just keep in mind, fencing is not fool-proof either.

♦ Deer do not like anything that affects their footing or their ability to make a quick getaway. If possible, incorporate level changes into your garden by using terracing, steps, and berms. And when choosing hardscape materials, consider using rough, uneven surfaces in areas of your garden that deer frequent.

♦ Wear blinders when plant shopping. Ok, this is not a real design strategy, but it is important when creating a deer-resistant garden. Stop impulse buying and learn to love plants the deer don’t like. If you have shade, develop a passion for ferns, not hosta. Like spring-flowering bulbs? Think daffodils, not tulips. Ask a local independent garden center for a list of deer-resistant plants and then start shopping.

♦ When establishing a new garden bed or border, stick with highly deer-resistant plants. After a few years, it’ll be safer to mix in some less-resistant plants once the deer have learned to leave the bed alone.

♦ Ornamental grasses and herbs are very deer-resistant. Create meadows with seed mixes of regionally appropriate grasses and wildflowers  or adapt traditional herb-intensive designs, like knot gardens, to fit your garden’s style.

♦ Plant browse-susceptible plants in containers on an elevated deck or terrace.  This is not a guarantee against deer browsing but it is a little extra insurance.

Maintenance Matters, Too

♦ Deer seem to prefer heavily fertilized plants that are rich in nitrogen, carbs, minerals and salts. Rather than fertilizing your plants so they become deer candy, feed your soil so your plants are healthy but not full of excess nutrients.

♦ Clean up acorns and fallen fruit from under trees. You wouldn’t leave food lying around on the floor in your house, right? Don’t do it in your garden, either.

♦ Remove invasive understory plants that provide shelter and cover for deer.

♦ Limb up the branches of trees that are not deer-resistant to a height of at least 6 feet. This will keep precious foliage, flowers and fruit out of their feeding zone.

♦ Protect young trees and shrubs, when they are especially susceptible to deer browsing. This allows the plants to get established and trains the deer not to eat them.

I invite you to check out what my fellow Roundtables have to say on the subject of Gardening With Deer:

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

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Rebecca Sweet:  Gossip in the Garden:  Los Altos, CA

Tara Dilliard : Vanishing Threshold: Garden, Life, Home : Atlanta, GA

Container Gardening for the Birds

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Bird-friendly outdoor planterDressing up your outdoor planters and urns for the winter season is an easy way to add color to your garden and to provide a little more food for the birds and other small wildlife that make your garden home during the winter.

 

I made this container in only a few minutes, mostly with items I already had on hand. The planter is a recycled 1-gallon plant container. It’s not the fanciest vessel but it does the trick. I like that it doesn’t overpower or detract from the arrangement. The red-twig dogwood branches, sedum, and hypericum berries are also re-purposed. The sedum, an ingredient in several other seasonal displays this year, will be planted  in the garden in the spring.

 

The winterberry branches, from a local floral supply house, add a pop of color and will carry the display throughout part of the winter. The birds are already flitting about and grabbing a berry here and there.

 

Scout Your Garden for Goodies

 

Here’s another urn I created for a client. Most of the materials were found on the property — the black pine, white pine, arborvitae and juniper boughs dripping with berries were saved after a day of pruning. The winterberry and blue cedar branches were bought to add more berries for color and for the array of birds who make the garden their home.

 

Regardless of where you live, it’s simple to find local plant material that is ideal for creating  colorful seasonal planters. Remember to layer plant material, add different textures (conifers and broad-leaf evergreens are good choices), a little height (look for interesting branches) and some berries for a dash of color and food for the birds.

 

If you want to add some seed ornaments to your arrangement, check out this recipe from Country Living or this one  from the National Wildlife Federation.

 

Do you add any special treats for the birds to your outdoor containers?

Plant This, Not That

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Clethra alnifolia

Summer sweet - A native alternative to butterfly bush

Recently, fellow Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens team member, Genevieve Schmidt, wrote a post about native plant alternatives for several overused plants found in many gardens in California, where Gen lives, gardens and works as a landscaper.

 

As Gen mentions in her post,Plant This, Not That: California Natives Edition, by simply looking beyond the every-house-on-my-street-has-one-of-those plants, and instead choosing a similar native plant, gardeners “could be adding wildlife value and getting a similar color or textural effect in the garden”.

 

Pat Sutton also joined Gen and wrote about eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), in her post Plant This, Not That: New Jersey Natives Edition.  And now it’s my turn to jump on the bandwagon and write a post for Connecticut (and New England) gardeners and suggest a native alternative to three  non-native staples of many local gardens.

 

Read about my native plant alternatives to hybrid hollies, butterfly bush and maiden grass at Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens.

Fall Foliage Star: Oakleaf Hydrangea

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Here in southwestern Connecticut, the foliage is finally starting to turn blazing colors of red, yellow and orange. The reds really seem to be coming into their own right now. The display is late this year, most likely due to effects of the summer drought and TI Irene, and overall the colors are a bit more subdued than usual, but it is definitely fall.

 

Fall makes you realize that color and interest in the garden has to come from much more than a plant’s flowers. One of my favorite plants for months of interest in my garden is oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia).

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More Than Just Great Leaves

◊ Oakleaf hydrangea is the quintessential woodland garden plant.  With its large, coarse leaves, its ideal for adding texture to almost any shady spot.

◊ The species grows into a large, 8′ x 8′, shrub. If you’d prefer a smaller shrub look for cultivars such as ‘Pee Wee’,  ‘Sikes Dwarf’  or ‘Snow Queen’.

◊ Oakleaf hydrangea is hardy in zones 5 – 9, and prefers a site with well-draining soil that is acidic.

◊ Add an occasional shovelful of compost and mulch around the base of this shrub to protect tender roots.

◊ As an added bonus, oakleaf hydrangea sports white flowers in the summer and the bark on older branches of oakleaf hydrangeas exfoliates.

◊ Use oakleaf hydrangea as a specimen plant or, for greater effect, mass them together for a colorful hedge.

◊ Oakleaf hydrangea is not reliably deer-resistant.

 

Which plants are stars in your fall garden?

Coneflowers and Winter Hardiness

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Echinacea in my Connecticut gardenAre you one of the many gardeners who is enamored with the wide array of new coneflower (Echinacea) cultivars on the market?

It seems like plant breeders are spitting out coneflower cultivars at an escalating rate…you can find flowers in shades of pink, yellow, orange, red and purple. Singles, doubles and even double-deckers. Small cones, massive cones, cones in greens and orange. Short and stout or tall and lanky, there seems to be an Echinacea cultivar to fit almost every garden scenario.

The problem many gardeners seem to have with some Echinacea cultivars is that they are not always reliably winter hardy. I’ve run into problems myself with plants I used in clients’ gardens. Planted in the spring, they’d flower well during the summer and then die during the winter. So I went back to using the tried and true species, our native purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). This is a plant that never lets me down.

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo

So how do you know which coneflower cultivar has the best chance of being a star in your garden? The other day I heard Rick Lewandowski, Director of the Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, speak about the diversity and adaptability of native plants. He was discussing coneflowers and how the plants are being breed for larger flowers and double flowers.

Vintage wine - a top performer (photo courtesy of American Meadows)

He said the Mt. Cuba Center recently completed an evaluation of coneflower cultivars and found that those cultivars with E. purpurea as a parent seem to perform best in garden settings, possibly because E. purpurea has a fibrous root system which adds to the plants hardiness. The report lists overall highly recommended coneflower cultivars as well as a best in class for a variety of different colors. The last page is a chart of the cultivars evaluated as well as some recent introductions that look promising. If you’re in the market for coneflowers, you’ll want to read the report.

A Little More Help

Maybe, like me, you started off with an E. purpurea cultivar but still your plants died. Thankfully, I have advice from another plant expert to pass on that may be helpful.

A recent edition of the Weeding Gnome newsletter from Angela Treadwell-Palmer of Plants Noveau, addressed the topic of coneflowers and their hardiness image problem. Angela has advice for gardeners and growers alike when it comes to getting the most out of coneflowers. Here, paraphrased, are her comments for home gardeners when it comes to getting the best results from your newly planted coneflowers:

  • Plant your coneflowers early in the growing season. They need time to get their roots established before the cold weather sets in.
  • Coneflowers do not like wet feet so plant them a little high if you have concerns about drainage.
  • Before you buy any coneflowers, check the pot for a healthy root system.

Between Rick’s coneflower evaluation notes and Angela’s advice on planting coneflowers, I feel like I’m ready to dip my toe back into the ever-expanding coneflower pool.

How about you? Are you growing coneflowers in your garden? If so, which ones are your favorites?

Creating a Deer-Resistant Garden

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If you garden around deer, you understand how difficult it can be to create a garden that is visually pleasing to people while at the same time being as unappealing as possible to deer.  We all know the best strategy for keeping deer out of our gardens and away from our plants is to erect a deer fence. But let’s face it, that is not an option for every gardener, either from a financial or an aesthetic standpoint.

If  Only Deer Could Read

While lists of deer resistant plants abound, they are only so helpful. First of all, the deer don’t read them. They don’t know that plants like lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis), lilac (Syringa vulgaris) and forsythia (Forsythia intermedia) are widely touted as being deer resistant. All are recent deer favorites in my garden. That’s another inherent problem with lists of deer-resistant plants, what’s deer resistant in my garden might not be in yours. And vice versa. Finding the right deer-resistant plants for your garden is truly a case of trial and error.

Sorry for the quality, I took this early one morning. What you don't see are the other two deer just outside of the frame on the right. UGH!

The best advice I can offer, regardless of where you garden, is to start off with a palette of deer-resistant plants for your region and then pay close attention. A great place to find a list of locally deer-resistant plants is at your independent garden center or check with your local Cooperative Extension office.

There are so many factors that influence ‘browsability’ of plants, including the time of the year, extreme weather conditions and the taste buds of your deer. Knowing a little bit about deer and their likes and dislikes can go a long way towards helping you create a deer-resistant garden.

Keep ‘Em Guessing

◊ Deer are creatures of habit. More than likely, they enter and exit your garden at the same points and follow the same general path around it each time. That means a deer-resistant plant located on a known deer pathway may see more damage than the same plant located elsewhere in your garden. Take notes about what’s happening in your garden and transplant deer favorites if needed.

◊ Deer seem to like plants that have been over-fertilized. According to some scientists, deer are attracted to the excess nitrogen in some plants. Rather than adding all sorts of extra fertilizers to over-stimulate your plants, simply top dress  with compost once a year to provide your plants with the balanced nutrition they need.

◊ Deer do not like to navigate grade changes in a garden. They dislike anything that affects their footing or hinders a quick getaway. Use berms, terracing and steps to deal with natural slopes in your garden. Make it as difficult and uncomfortable as possible for the deer to cruise around your garden.

◊ There are certain times of the year when deer browsing is especially intense so you’ll need to be extra vigilant. These include times of drought (deer get almost 1/3 of their water from the moisture in plants), heavy snow coverage (when deer can’t access their usual food sources they often turn to typically resistant plants to survive), and spring when plants are pushing out new growth.

◊ ‘Hide’ deer candy among deer-resistant plants. This seems to work best if you use highly fragrant deer-resistant plants, like herbs.  I have to admit I’ve had limited success with this strategy, but I know gardeners who use this camouflaging  technique all the time.

◊ It can be more difficult to protect perennials than shrubs or trees, so design your garden with as many shrubs and trees as possible. Simply limbing up susceptible trees out of deer browsing range, typically about 5′ – 6′ off of the ground, can greatly expand your plant options. This is an especially effective strategy if you are a wildlife gardener who plants fruiting tree to attract birds, such as crabapples, service berries or hawthorns.

◊ As you’re waiting for newly planted perennials and shrubs to fill in, fill gaps with deer-resistant annuals. Teach deer early on that there’s nothing yummy in your garden.

A Last Resort

Forget the Belgian block apron, install a cattle grate instead!

And here’s another tip that probably is not for everyone (kind of like a fence) but it seems to work. Install a cattle grate at the entrance to your driveway. This one, that from a distance looks very similar to the ubiquitous Belgian block aprons seen in this area of southwestern Connecticut, protects a 5-acre property that is full of deer goodies. The property is surrounded be a deer fence so the only access point for deer is straight down the driveway.

Since deer hate to walk on uneven surfaces, the cattle grate keeps them away from delicacies like apple, pear and cherry trees. Not to mention a lush veggie garden and plethora of plants that will never be found on anyone’s list of deer-resistant plants.

For more tips on creating a deer resistant garden, especially for your west coasters, check out Gen Schmidt’s post, Putting Your Deer on a Diet.

So tell me…what strategies for deterring deer work in your garden?

Before you leave, don’t forget to check out my post on Deer Off deer repellent. If you’d like to be eligible to win a free bottle of Deer Off, leave a comment on that post, too.

Tick-Scaping – Tips for Reducing Tick Habitats in Your Garden

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This week I’ve been looking at ways to keep deer away from your prized plants. (If you’d like to be entered to win a free bottle of Deer Off deer repellent, read this post.) As gardeners, we are always looking for a list of foolproof deer-resistant plants or the best deer-repellent we can find so we can grow all the plants we want to grow, not just those the deer seem to leave alone. But keeping deer out of your garden has far-reaching benefits that you may not realize.

 

For many gardeners, the more disturbing truth about having deer in your garden is that you also have ticks in your garden. Many ticks carry diseases which can be quite serious. Here in Connecticut, where Lyme disease was first identified back in the 1970′s, it is estimated that approximately 25% of the ticks are infected with Lyme Disease. (For more information about Lyme Disease, visit the CDC’s Lyme Disease webpage.)

Keeping Deer Out Is NOT Enough

Cute, but also a tick taxi!

Another disturbing truth, especially here in New England, is that even if you do manage to keep deer out of your garden, you are still susceptible to tick bites and tick borne-illnesses. I’m not qualified to get into the intricacies of a deer tick’s life cycle but you can find more info here and here.

 

This is especially important information for wildlife and habitat gardeners who invite birds and small mammals into their gardens. While I often advocate for creating a wildlife-friendly garden, just remember those little lovelies can be tick hosts, too.

 

So how do you balance the safety of you and your family with your desire to create a wildlife-friendly garden? Just like many other aspects of gardening, there are going to have to be trade-offs. Many tick-scaping practices involve eliminating or reducing habitat for a whole host of beneficial insects, birds and small mammals.

 

While there is some evidence that suggests having a highly bio-diverse landscape can help control the number of ticks, it’s important to think about how you and your family use your garden because there are ways to manage or isolate know tick habitats so you can have the best of both worlds.

 

Tick-Scaping Tips

The very first thing I suggest to all my garden design clients is that they get rid of any Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) shrubs on their property. Sure they’re deer-resistant but they are also highly invasive in many states, are known mice hotels and there has been a link established between Japanese barberry and Lyme Disease. But before you go out in the garden and chop them down, check out this info from UCONN on proper Japanese barberry removal.

 

Other tick management strategies include:

♦ Use plants that are deer-resistant and limit the use of deer favorites. Find a reliable local resource to provide appropriate lists of deer resistant plants in your area.

♦ Ticks prefer densely wooded areas and those transitional areas in some gardens between woodland and grass or ornamental beds. Keep that in mind as you design your garden.

♦ Reduce or remove brush piles and leaf litter, favorite hiding places for small mammals. I understand this may be an especially difficult proposition for habitat gardeners. But if reducing ticks in your garden is your primary objective, this can definitely help.

♦ Trim tree branches to let more sunlight into your garden. Ticks generally do not like sunny spots.

♦ Studies have shown that a 3′ wide barrier of wood chips, mulch or gravel between woodland borders and play spaces can greatly reduce the number of ticks in the play area.

♦ If you have play equipment, position in a sunny spot and remember the 3′ barrier rule.

♦ Groundcovers, like pachysandra, is a favorite tick habitat. We inherited a garden with tons of pachysandra and the common refrain to the kids when they were young was ‘stay out of the pachysandra, the ticks live there’.

 

To find out much more about managing tick habitat, download the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station’s Tick Management Handbook.

 

Are ticks a problem where you garden? if so, I’d love to hear about what are you doing to reduce ticks in your garden.

Dealing With Deer in Your Garden

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Deer eating 'deer-resistant' forsythia!

It seems everywhere I look these days, someone is writing about the impact deer are having on homeowners’ gardens and also on the balance between native and non-native plants in local ecosystems. If you’re one of the lucky ones who does not have to deal with deer munching on your plants, consider yourself blessed. And probably living on borrowed time.

 

I’ve written before about the prevalence of deer here in southwestern Connecticut and the effectiveness of various deer repellents.  No matter what your repellent of choice is, the deer will eventually become used to it and it will become less and less effective. Like many gardeners who deal with deer, my arsenal of deer repellents is continually changing. When it comes to deer repellents, it can be very  frustrating because what works in your friend’s garden may not work in yours.

 

In fact, the University of Connecticut is now evaluating the effectiveness of homemade deer repellents. You can read more, and even find out how to submit your own brew, here at joene’s garden.  It will be interesting to see if any of the homemade concoctions work as good as, or even better, than the commercial ones.

 

The problem with deer comes down to one simple fact…there are just too many of them in  most urban and suburban neighborhoods. Sue Sweeney, a fellow team member at Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens blog (and a fellow resident of southwestern CT) wrote an intriguing post about whether or not hunting could be  The Cure for White-Tailed Deer.

 

Even though I battle deer for control of my garden on a daily basis, I’m not sure I’m ready to concede that hunting in residential neighborhoods is the answer. But birth control may be. Apparently there is a new birth control vaccine for deer, GonaCon, which was mentioned in this Popular Science article. The vaccine, recently approved by the EPA, renders female deer infertile for up to five years.  Before you start rejoicing, read the article because there are some major limitations. But, hey, it’s a start.

 

If hunting and vaccines are not on your to-do list this fall, you might want to check out this compilation of reader suggestions on keeping deer out of your garden that I found on Garden Web.  While I’m not endorsing any of them, some are quite amusing…and disturbing!

 

And if you’re interested in winning a free bottle of Deer Off deer repellent from the manufacturer, Havahart please check out my evaluation of Deer Off and leave a comment on that post.