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The Deer Hate Herbs

THE DEER HATE HERBS

     I think there is a time in a person's life for lush flower gardens, and a time for the tight discipline of an Elizabethan garden with old-fashioned herbs. And if you have a lot of deer in the area, it doesn’t matter what time it is in your life. The deer will eat everything you cherish, happily munching roses, azaleas, rhododendron, daylilies - but they draw the line at herbs.

     I feel sorry for the deer in the woodland behind us. They’re boxed in by housing developments, they become more numerous each year, and they’re hungry. They’ve eaten all the low-lying vegetation they like, turning the woodland into a barren waste at the lower levels, and they are now working on the vegetation they don’t like. Which includes plants in my garden that are supposed to be “deer proof.” Deer don’t like lilacs, and they left mine alone . . . but I looked out last fall to find my bush denuded as high up as a deer can reach. Fortunately it is an old bush able to rise above the situation.

     Deer are not grazers, they’re browsers, and they have to be semi-desperate before you’ll see them grazing on the lawn. I do see them grazing on my lawn in late summer, but they’ve so far resisted the herbs.

     CREATING AN HERB GARDEN. The Internet has much practical advice on growing herbs, but it took me awhile to find a site that explored the beauties that are to be found in a herb garden. I finally located the one below, SUPERB HERBS, done by a woman who loves herbs and everything about them. If you explore this absolutely excellent site, you will see that hundreds of hours of labor have gone into it. Please don't take it for granted. This site is a beautiful labor of love.

http://www.superbherbs.net/design5.htm

     Herbs, like vegetables, require a fair bit of sun, but if you have shade, the deer won't eat columbines, daffodils, foxgloves, or hellebores, all of which do fine in mostly shade. Leaves of the last two are poisonous, and the deer somehow know it. On the down side: deer may not like daffodils, but they adore tulips. Tulips are deer candy.
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