By Sasha Kodet. Make your landscape less inviting with plants that offend. Our deer friends dislike aromatic, prickly, fuzzy and milky sap plants. With recent hot, dry weather and the first flush of green appearing in home landscapes, your plants may look more tempting than ever to neighborhood deer. Imagine your yard from their point of view — it may offer quite the buffet!
You can make your landscape a little less inviting with plants that offend their sensibilities. Choose beautiful but aromatic, prickly or hairy plants. (Trichomes are the fuzzy “hairs” plants grow on leaves and stems to discourage herbivores and other pests.) Deer will also likely take a hard pass on plants with milky sap.
Are your so-called deer-resistant plants still getting nibbled on? First of all, there are no plants that are 100% deer-proof — and dry weather may make them eat something they’d otherwise avoid. Or, there may be a parade of deer just sampling your plants before deciding they’re gross.
Either way, here are a few plants that may help deer steer clear.
- Rosemary: Deer tend to find its resinous, leathery leaves unpleasant to chew and digest. Also, the strong camphor fragrance of its essential oils may actually help protect nearby plants.
- Gray santolina: Sometimes called lavender cotton, this lovely evergreen is aromatic and drought-tolerant.
- Salvia: Autumn sage, mealy blue sage, cedar sage, there are lots of options for a colorful garden. Deer may nibble the flowers but tend to avoid the leaves.
- Damianita: Attract butterflies instead of deer with this low-growing native; its camphor fragrance is unappealing to deer.
Get deer to step away from the garden with these select plants:
- Agarita: Deer tend to leave this prickly native shrub alone. However, look for pollinators drawn to its fragrant yellow flowers in spring, followed later by songbirds eating its red berries.
- Green sotol: Carefully choose a sunny spot for this sharp-edged sotol in your (hopefully) deer-free garden. Remember to consider its full size!
- Cenizo: Drought-hardy, heat-tolerant, deer-resistant and gorgeous purple flowers? Cenizo is a San Antonio favorite for many reasons. Its hairy, silvery leaves are evergreen.
- Milkweed: A popular choice for pollinator gardens, milkweeds attract butterflies, beetles, bees and many other pollinators. Milkweeds are poisonous and the milky sap can cause skin irritation.
These are just a few of the more than 200 deer-resistant plant options on Garden Style San Antonio.
Sasha Kodet is a conservation planner whose large garden attracts a myriad of wildlife and curious neighbors with minimal water. At SAWS, Kodet develops outdoor programs to help people create their own beautiful, water-saving landscapes. She draws on her two decades of experience as a naturalist, botanical garden educator and event planner. Kodet enjoys (really) long walks in the woods and has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail.
