Let’s face it - I am all about habitat and environmentally friendly and responsible gardening. I am. I love birds, bees, butterflies and the like. But, let’s also face the fact that we live in deer country. And Oh Deer! (%^&*^%$*!!), this can be a harsh reality for a gardener. What to do? Throw in the gardening towel? Set up a tree stand, get out your rifle, paint your face, put on your camo and look through your venison cookbooks while you wait for deer to venture back to your decimated garden? (Although your HOA and/or neighbors might object to this second option.) Photo: Hungry deer heading toward my garden.

Ask the question “How should I deal with ravenous deer decimating my garden?” in mixed gardening company and you will get some seriously interesting answers, ranging from little bags of human hair hung throughout your shrubs and trees, to sprinkling human urine all around your garden (again, maybe not the best if your neighbors are quite near), to bags of Ivory soap, to radios blaring soft rock or talk-shows in the garden all night, and on it goes.

Deer “repelling” products available commercially are many, not inexpensive and not completely reliable. If you’ve tried them, you will nod your head in sympathetic agreement with the understatement that they do not smell great while you are applying them. In my former garden, I used Liquid Fence and it did seem to work for the most part, the only caveats being that I had to apply it fairly regularly and it smelled so vile going on that it became more and more difficult to talk myself into making yet another application. Once dry, it was hard to detect the odor, but while still wet it was bad, and Lord help you if the wind was blowing while you were trying to spray your plants with the stuff. Photo: Hungry deer looking disdainfully at California sage (Artemisia californica).

And then, of course, there’s the very tall, very sturdy, very expensive and not very attractive fencing solution.

Karen McGrath, owner of Karen McGrath Design: Landscapes for Outdoor Living, based in Redding, has worked with many clients in rural and suburban areas where deer are an issue, and has done some in-depth research and experimentation into the issue. She recently completed a design project for a large rural property that involved a small kitchen garden, an herb garden and ornamental plantings along extensive walkways. After looking over her various solutions to the plague of deer, I asked Karen to tell us a little bit about her approach to handling them, which involves using multiple strategies, local research, and the path of least resistance. Photo: Karen McGrath.

Karen is not a proponent of putting an 8 - 10 foot fence around your entire property because of the expense and the look and feel of it for the average garden. “The first thing I would recommend when looking at your property is to determine what exactly you want to plant that the deer definitely WILL eat - your vegetable garden for instance, and locate these plants in a portion of your property where you can physically keep the deer out - this is the part of your yard around which you will want to use a fence or hedge or other barrier.”

“Look at your property and use existing elements to help with your physical barrier,” Karen suggests. “The walls of your house can act as one or two sides of the barrier. If you have a slope, use it to your advantage. Deer generally don’t like to jump over something if they can’t see to the other side, so a wall or fence that has hedge plants obscuring the view to the other side will help - and if this is placed in a way that the deer would be going up-hill to get into your enclosed space, it will be even more effective.” In one of her designs, Karen took this idea up a notch in her design called for the construction of a ha-ha, or dry moat, on the outside edge of an enclosed garden space. “A ‘ha-ha’ is a historic design element that English landscape designers used in large estates, the ditch creates the slope beneath an enclosure to help deter the deer.” Photo: Deer resistant Artemisia, manzanita and bunch grasses below the Sundial Bridge in Redding.

For planting the rest of the property, Karen tells us, the one thing you can be sure of is that deer in one place have very different eating habits than deer in another place - so while lists of so-called deer-proof plants are helpful, they only go so far. “Deer are like kids - some eat spinach, some don’t. Who knows why? And while many native plants are deer resistant, not all native plants are deer-proof in all places by a long shot. In general, deer don’t like strongly scented plants - such as rosemary, sages, lavenders, but even these they may browse on, especially in spring when tender new growth looks good to them.”

In choosing your plants for the unenclosed portions of your garden, “I would suggest taking a walk or drive around your own neighborhood. See what the deer are not eating in other unenclosed settings and you are sure to have some success.” Photo: Left: Deer-resistant rosemary, and Right: Deer-resistant ferns and hellebores.

Below is a list of some deer resistant plants that Karen has had luck with in the North State: Photo: A floriferous deer-resistant planting of California fuchsia and pink buckwheat (Eriogonum spp.).

Achillea millefolium - YARROW
Aloe - ALOE
Arbutus - MADRONE
Arctostaphylos - MANZANITA
Artemisia - WORMWOOD
Berberis - BARBERRY
Buddleia - BUTTERFLYBUSH
Callistemon - BOTTLEBRUSH BUSH
Calocedrus decurrens INCENSE CEDAR
Cercis -REDBUD
Cistis - ROCK ROSE
Coreopsis - COREOPSIS
Cupressus sempervirens ‘Glauca’ - ITALIAN CYPRESS
Euphorbia - EUPHORBIA or SPURGE
Grevillea rosmarinifolia - ROSEMARY GREVILLEA
Hesperaloe parviflora - RED YUCCA
Kniphofia - TORCH LILY
Lavandula - LAVENDER
Muhlenbergia rigens - DEER GRASS
Phlomis russeliana - JERUSALEM SAGE
Phormium - NEW ZEALAND FLAX
Rosa rugosa - RUGOSA ROSE
Rosmarinus - ROSEMARY
Salvia - SAGE
Santolina rosmarinifolia - LAVENDER COTTON
Sedum - SEDUM
Solidago - GOLDENROD
Tulbaghia violacea - SOCIETY GARLIC
Yucca recurvifolia - YUCCA
Epilobium/Zauschenaria - CALIFORNIA FUCHSIA

In addition to the plants listed above, in my home garden, the deer browse the tops of landscape roses but don’t eat them to the ground, they also leave Woodwardias - giant chain fern, Mahonias (Berberis) - Oregon grape, Loropetalums - Chinese fringe flower, toyon, iris and peonies alone. Photo: Deer-resistant and native toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia).

Karen also recommends the books “Deer in My Garden: The Yucky Flower Series” (Garden Wisdom Press; two volumes – perennials & sub-shrubs, and groundcovers & edgers), by Carolyn Singer, who lives and gardens in Grass Valley, California. These books can be purchased at Lyon Books in Chico. Photo: Deer-resistant lavender.

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In a North State Garden is a weekly Northstate Public Radio and web-based program celebrating the art, craft and science of home gardening in Northern California and made possible in part by the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State and on the campus of CSU, Chico. In a North State Garden is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com a regional news source that is simultaneously universal and positively North State.

Did you have to read William Butler Yeats when you were in school? I can’t recall too many things I had to read in school and can still remember, but this poem I remember and it continues to be one of my favorites: Photo: A happy black bee on a salvia.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 5
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 10
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

If you are a gardener, you have no doubt had the formative experience of a “quiet” moment working in the garden - trimming, weeding, harvesting - your head lost in the shrubbery, your hands in the dirt, your labor accompanied by the happy hum of bees at work on a nearby plant in bloom. Or the experience of being dive-bombed by hummingbirds trying to get to the plant you happen to be working in. Or of realizing that you’ve been standing stock still for several minutes completely riveted by the dance of the butterflies across the top of the flower bed. Photo a bee flying into the tubular flower of a California fuchsia. Read the rest of this entry »

The Wildflower Wand and the February Fake-Out:

My gardening friend John Whittlesey, of Canyon Creek Nursery outside of Oroville, is working on a landscape design job in the Stonyford area. He wrote to me in mid-February describing his experience of driving to work one morning and not seeing a wildflower in sight, then coming home that same afternoon and “like a magic wand had proclaimed flowers, there were masses of the white popcorn flower and a hillside with flows of the yellow buttercup among the purple shooting star. I swear they weren’t there this morning.” The handful of warm days indeed waved like a magic wand over even the mountain areas of the North State mid-February bringing out Manzanita and almonds, fiddlenecks and blue dix. This stretch of mid-winter warmth is not an uncommon seasonal event – gardeners often refer to it as the February planting window.

Funnily enough, this past weekend, I was talking to a non-gardener who referred to the spring-like days as the February Fake-out – just a teasing taste of what will not be here for another month and a half or so. Still, it’s a nice illustration of how gardener’s world views are all about finding opportunity. Looking back at my garden journal from last year, March is indeed full of erratic temperatures, rain and continued snow and frost. But it inevitably marches us on to the real spring that will arrive in April and May. Read the rest of this entry »

“I like to think they are shy,” David Walther, co-owner with his wife Cathy, of Spring Fever Nursery in Yankee Hill tells me, speaking of his beloved hellebores. “Many varieties of hellebores have flowers that face downward because as winter bloomers they are trying to protect their pollen from wind and rain and snow until pollination takes place. But the difference between the back of a hellebore’s so-called bloom, and its wide - often surprisingly beautiful - face can be a night and day difference.” Photo: A bowl of floating hellebore blooms plucked from the array at Spring Fever Nursery - included are Helleborus orientalis, Helleborus niger and many Hellborus x hyrbidus in single, semi-double and fully double forms.
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It’s mid- February and even in the colder sections of the North State the time is now for planning and even planting your spring and summer vegetable seeds and starts – inside and out. On Monday evening February 15th, I hosted a special edition of I-5 LIVE on Northstate Public Radio (91.7 fm KCHO in Chico and 88.9 fm in Redding) from 8 to 9 pm to chat about edible gardening and getting ready for the spring vegetable garden.

My guests for the evening were David Grau, owner of Valley Oak Tool, former market gardener and organizer of the Chico Organic Gardening Series; also, Wayne Kessler, co-owner with his wife Laurel, of Shambani Organics, a specialty herb and vegetable start grower based in Shingletown, California.
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The Gateway Science Museum is opening to the public on Saturday February 27th – with a ribbon cutting at 10:00 am and grand opening celebration activities for adults and children alike throughout the day - throughout the whole museum. Photo: The Gateway Science Museum’s logo is derived from the skylight at the top of the front tower of the new building’s entrance. That tower represents a volcano - such as the historic Mt. Yana or Lassen Peak or Mt. Shasta, which have been ‘wayfinders’, or directional markers, for people in the North State for 1000s of years.
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Age in a garden is a wonderful thing – worthy of celebrating. Age in a gardening publication in my mind is to be celebrated equally because it is through gardening publications that the ephemera of gardens and gardeners live on in perpetuity. Pacific Horticulture, one of the preeminent publications for gardeners in the West Coast states, turns 35 this year. And as with good gardens and gardeners generally, this gardening publication just gets better with age. Photo: Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ on the cover of the first 2010 issue of Pacific Horticulture, which sports the magazine’s bold new type face.
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Wow – How about that rain and snow? And more is on the way. Which is wonderful for our plants, soils and watersheds, but when it comes in long stretches of gray days, it can play havoc with my mood (and the power in much of our region). Even a few minutes of fresh air and weak sunshine does me a world of good. You don’t want to walk on planted ground when it is very wet if you can help it, because you will compact the soil to the point of harming its structure. But you can get out and walk on unplanted ground – such as paths. I got so stir crazy in the latest long gray stretch that in the pouring rain I rebuilt my whole compost system and weeded all my pathways. Weeds come out of wet soil so nicely – slick as snot as my father likes to say. Photo: Gray skies hand low and tulle fog fills in the valleys looking southwest from Mt. Shasta in January. Read the rest of this entry »

This epic wet weather in the North State over the past few weeks has me holed up and dreaming about my spring planting of seeds. I am working on expanding my raised beds for vegetables from the existing two to a productive six beds - each about 3 feet wide, 12 feet long and 2 feet deep. Photo: Raised beds framed in cedar in an enclosed and formal home garden.
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How’s the pruning going for you?

I’ve just finished pruning my ‘Pink Lady’ apple and ‘Santa Rosa’ plum trees. I am still working on the roses and grapes, but the fruit trees are done. It went pretty well this year – but then, I was really inspired this year. Photo above: The historic Camden House at Whiskeytown Recreation area seen through a shroud of 100 - 150 year old ‘Lady’ apple tree branches.

I don’t know about you, but pruning can be a tricky task for me. As an enthusiastic and long-time gardener, I know that I should prune my fruit trees and vines every year – for form, for production and in many cases for the long-term health and life of my plants. But some years, the task seems more troubling than others: I diligently study the sketches and graphs in the books and articles, I even take the diagrams out to my trees. I look at the book, I look at the tree. I look back at the book. Hmm. Sometimes the tree looks so differently than the book’s sketch that I am just not sure. Other times the tree looks great – so why prune? I have been known in gardens and seasons past to look one final time at the book, shake my head and take my book, my clippers and my intimidation back into the house for another time/season/year. Photo: Rico Montenegro discussing the growth of one of the old apple trees at the Camden House site. Read the rest of this entry »