Deer Fencing With a View, building one.

The old way to keep deer at bay was ugly.

Deer fence barriers have usually been made with woven wire mesh up to six feet and several horizontal strands of wire above that, creating a prison-perimeter that looks like Stalag 13 and that's not acceptable for most suburban or rural yards.

It's spring and the fawns will soon be looking to stake out new territory. Testing every fence.

I learned of a special fence that had a 20-year track record of keeping deer out. Because no part of the fence is taller than four feet, the home owner's view remains mostly unobstructed; the double placement avoids the looming ugliness of the tall eight-foot agricultural version while being, in my area, just as effective. There have been at least five replications of this type of fence after I built this model. They all work.

The fence are both only four-feet high. The two four-foot high fences are built five feet apart. (See the photo in the upper right above.) Since deer can’t talk, I’m left to guess why this seemingly uncomplicated design is so effective. The most common theory is that the deer can’t see enough room between the two fences to land and then rebound over the inner fence. For whatever reason, this configuration seems to work on both flat and sloped sites. The fences must be in the open"meadow" as a neighbor built one in the forest and it didn't work. (I was the first to take the bold leap to build one on a gradual slope.)

Both four-foot fences can be made with 2"X4" inch wire-mesh fencing attached to six-foot metal stakes pounded two feet into the ground. Or, for a more aesthetic look, the most visible areas of fencing can be made of wooden boards, pickets, or grape stakes. Because it requires additional posts and hardware, the cost of the double fence will be somewhat higher than that of an eight-foot barrier, but the unencumbered view is often worth the expense And working at four feet or less is much easier for the weekend fence builder.

I staggered the top of these grape stakes by six inches and left a gap as wide as a grape stake to give the fence a lighter feel. The inner wire fence was planted with honeysuckle, that rapidly obscured the wire and continued to be effective.

With two fences, two gates must be built at each opening. One attractive solution is to incorporate two four-foot gates into a five-foot-square eight-foot-tall arbor, which can also serve as support for climbing roses planted inside the inner fence. (I learned from the client that five feet was bit to tight to easily pass through with a wheelbarrow —it worked but is a tight, knuckle-scrapping width. So, all future designs will have a six-foot wide arbor.)

I decided to have the grape stakes on the gates reflect the curve of the arbor. I used cardboard to sketch the curve, flip it, and use it as a template for the stake. (See the illustration on the lower left.) The finished arbor, as seen above is attractive. However I felt I was taking a chance as the deer might use the hole to jump through. Luckily, after over 20 years no grazing ungulates have traversed the gate.

The client planted deer-resistant English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) grown from seed on the outside of the fence. Because the plants were grown from seed, there is a wonderful array of blossom colors—from typical lavender blue to royal blue to pastel blue and even almost pure white.

The combination of the lavender on the outside (the fourth photo) combined with the inner fence covered with honeysuckle and the fence nearly invisible. A pleasant, and fragrant, way to deter these beautiful, yet destructive-eating machines.

For the plantings outside the fence, it's important to realize that deer, their habits, and their appetites are always changing. However, in my garden, lavender has been untouched for 25 years. What deer eat and what will fence them out, varies throughout the country. Try each new strategy in moderation until you find out if it works. The answers to deer browsing will always remain as diverse as our local environments.

I built this fence nearly 20 years ago and no deer have crossed it. Once a mighty buck got trapped between the two fences. Luckily, he jumped out the way he came, away from the prized roses, strawberry plants, fruit trees and countless other delectables. If you don’t move to fast you can often slowly walk an animal back to where it breached the perimeter to see how it got in.

I rent my home and the layout of the house to the road and the garden would make it very difficult to construct a double four-foot fence. And the cost would be prohibitive. So I’ve settled upon planting deer-resistant exotics.

I wonder if this double fence will work in cold-weather areas where winters are snowy and harsh and deer become desperate. For one thing, snow drifts might make it easy for the deer to simply walk up to and over the four foot height. If you know of such a fence in your area, please let me know. For much of the west, it’s a solution worth experimenting with.

Electrical fencing, which provides a safe but deterring shock, is a common solution the snow parts of the country. A popular electric fence for parts of New England is a low-profile, five-foot-tall electric fence made of high-tensile wire.

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.


All rights reserved, Copyright 2008

Visit my web site to learn about my gardening books.

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Living With the Roots of an Oak Tree

I laugh (and cry) at the little orange fences they put around oaks during construction. They are nearly worthless. While it keeps vehicles for hitting and scaring the bark, it in no way protects the feeding roots.




As a maintenance gardener I’ve had to dig up a few oaks. And just below the ground the roots have a covering much like bark. Bark absorbs very few nutrients. In a study of 25-year-old apple tree in the UK found that the first four feet from the trunk accounted for less than 10% of all the water and nutrients absorbed.

The wobbly-orange fences are, at best placed at the edge of the foliage. A good start as it may help to keep water off the trunk’s base. But this is a far cry from protecting the majority of the root system’s feeding roots.

In the photograph to the left, the construction company dutifully surrounded the oak’s dripline. But all the machinery and the house itself cover what used to be the leaf litter, duff, and organic mater (humus) that once both fed and protected the young feeding roots.

The tiny root hairs, that live for just a day or so, tend to grow up into the fertile strata of the humus and duff zone. They, like all plants, want to be the first to capture liberated nutrients as they become avaiable. As one researcher put it—“roots grow up not down”. While a bit overstated, they fact is the youngest rootlets and their root hairs reside well beyond the canopy of the tree, where all the construction is taking place. (Learn more in my book Roots Demystified,)

(See my Blog of March 31st to see diagrams of the extent of a roots wanderings.)

At one-half to thee times, or more of the width of the dripline roots gather nutrients and moisture far from the trunk or even the canopy.

The photo (on the above right) of the chairs face south along the Big Sur coastline are a good attempt to protect to crown of the young California live oak from moisture in the summer. The gravel does allow rain in the winter to percolate down along with oxygen and harmful gases escape. The compacted gravel is a bit hard on the feeding roots, but the tree seemed health. Perhaps this is one solution to living among oak woodlands.

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.

Visit my web site to learn about my gardening books.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2008

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Oh Deer!

It's early in the morning and the first of the graceful deer walks its favorite path from the woods, past the clay shards garden, and into the garden proper.

Alien plants that once were left alone by the deer now become snacks. Thirty years ago, as a new landscape gardener, I planted red-hot poker plants for their dramatic vertical stems topped by the flush of hot orange and yellow clusters of flowers, flowers that readily attract hummingbirds. I relied on these glorious plants until four years ago when the deer started to eat the flower heads. 

Now they eat the flower heads and the foliage to the ground. Similar casualties have been: the Flanders’s field poppies (They lasted four years, I was convinced the deer ate them to get high on the mind-soothing alkaloids—but alas, no morphine.), after 20 years the foliage of the glorious ‘Sunset’ rockrose with it’s hot-pink crape-paper flowers are reduce to stubble, a curious top-set “walking” onion lasted until just two years ago and is now eaten to the ground each summer as the local forage dries up, Euryops shrubs aren’t eaten, just the hot-yellow flowers negating the reason for planting them, the native sea pinks lasted only three years before the deer found them near my house, the native ginger was eaten back every fall only to be a lush thicket in the winter-the list goes on. I planted two types of ceanothus shrubs (the native “Summer Lilac” or tick brush—Ceanothus ‘Dark Star’ and ‘Julia Phelps’). The deer don’t eat the foliage. They just use the shrub to rub the velvet from their antler and destroy entire limbs. After four or five years they need to be replaced—because I love the rich violet color of the flowers. (Eating is not the only hazard. Once a deer simply laid down for a rest on top of a plant it doesn’t eat, gray santolina, thus breaking the shrub to death.

In the forest, the deer graze some on: the tender new growth of the huckleberry shrubs and new shoots of the western ferns; the lower limbs of the thimbleberry and new shoots of the native honeysuckle. They even browse the new growth of poison oak—which suits me fine.

It hurts my intellect, rattles my heart to forgive the deer as they graze upon native plants and evolve to consume well-established alien foliage and flowers. It’s also difficult to appreciate the grace and beauty of the does and their precious fawns when they give birth to two fawns a year compared to the more common birth of just one fawn many years ago, knowing the population is doubling every year due to the lack of enough predators or rampant disease. 

Luckily the deer have yet found the lavenders I grow tasty (nor the gophers). But an ominous hint of the future might be playing out as I’ve seen the naked stem of French lavenders’ blossoms. Having written a the book on lavender, if I loose these plants to the deer I might just throw in the towel (or shrub).

It’s a very difficult horticultural dance to waltz with the changing habits of the deer and strike a balance between alien and native shrubbery. There’s nothing very spiritual about wanting to strangle to death a svelte deer as it grazes on a beloved plant or favored fruit tree. The fawns are a precious addition to each spring, but a danger as they graze in my garden each summer. Deer are one of the best ways to try and deal with attachment. I often loose the battle.

Eight-foot deer fences start popping up when city folk move to the country to protect prized roses and a myriad of other plants that are just entrées for foraging deer. This leads to a concentration-camp look with the strand of barb wire at the eight foot level. It need not be that way. 

I learned of a special fence that had a 20-year track record of keeping deer out. It was only 4 feet high. But there were two 4-foot high fences 5 feet apart. Since deer can’t talk, I’m left to guess why this seemingly uncomplicated design is so effective. The most common theory is that the deer can’t see enough room between the two fences to land and then rebound over the inner fence. For whatever reason, this configuration seems to work on both flat and sloped sites. (This double fence may not work in cold-weather areas where winters are snowy and harsh and deer become desperate. For one thing, snow drifts might make it easy for the deer to simply walk up to and over the four foot height. For much of the west, it’s a solution worth experimenting with.) 

I built such a fence 18 years ago for a friend and no deer have crossed it. Once a mighty buck got trapped between the two fences. Luckily, he jumped out the way he came, away from the prized roses, strawberry plants, fruit trees and countless other delectables. If you don’t move to fast you can slowly walk an animal back to where it breached the perimeter to see how it got in.

I rent my home and the layout of the house to the road and the garden would make it very difficult to construct. So I’ve settled upon planting exotics.

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.

All rights reserved, Copyright 2008

Visit Robert Kourik's web site to learn about his great gardening books.