Having worked in the countryside all of my life I have often come across a lot of gardens that have been all but destroyed by some kind of feeding animal.
Whether it is rabbit or hare gnawing the bark from the bottom of young trees or the leaves from the lettuce in the vegetable patch or woodpeckers or crows tearing up the lawn in search of chafer grubs there is never really a garden that is safe.
Of course, the largest of foliage scoffing monsters is the fallow, muntjac or roe deer who can eat a lot of succulent greenery off of plants and trees in a very short space of time or severely damage the bark of young trees and they either eat it or scrape it off as young bucks rub their developing antlers against them.
One solution to the problem might be to try and scare them off with horrible smells, mirrors or dangly objects.
However the deer might be spooked for a day or two but they will soon get used to these additions to the garden and carry on regardless.
One solution - although not cheap - is a deer fence. Here, Simon Foxley of The Perfumed Garden explains that deer are creatures of habit and will follow the same trail for years so blocking them off is the only solution - however, your neighbour might not be too pleased with you passing on your problem.
Simon Foxley writes: We live in the beautiful and very social village of Chrishall. Its’ position on the Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire borders, in our eyes, make it a perfect situation to live. Our nearest towns are Royston in Hertfordshire and the very picturesque market town of Saffron Walden in the Uttlesford district of Essex.
We are 15 miles away from Cambridge and only about 50 miles from London. The M11 and A1 are 15 and 30 minutes drive away respectively and we have rail links on the Kings Cross and Liverpool Street lines only minutes away by car.
Stansted Airport is only a half hour drive away but that’s far enough not to be disturbed by the noise of planes (yet).
Reading the above paragraph makes it seem like a very busy place, but it’s not.
The village itself is not on a through road so most traffic is local. The busiest time is during the school run as parents from the neighbouring villages of Elmdon, Duddenhoe End, Heydon and Great Chishill, drop their children off at Chrishall COE Primary School.
Apart from that and the occasional visits to The Red Cow for something to eat and a pint of Adnams, it’s very quiet – that is until you hear the locals screaming and shouting at the herds of deer eating their way through their much loved plants!
Your browser may not support display of this image.Your browser may not support display of this image.The deer are beautiful and it is lovely to look out of your window in the morning see them grazing in the fields, unless you’re the farmer of course.
You will often see one or two white deer in the herd and you can get reasonably close to them if you are quiet and the wind is in the right direction.
Unfortunately deer do cause a lot of damage to vegetation (and cars). The Muntjac, introduced from China, eat low level fauna such as primulas and hyacinthoides non-scripta and also strip the lower bark from trees.
The Roe deer are able to reach the higher branches of trees and bushes and can clear them of leaves and buds, a particular favourite is apple blossom. They enjoy grazing on low level plants too.
A discussion has started on LJN about how to stop deer from entering gardens without an invite and then trashing them. Like most wild animals, deer follow the same tracks they have used for years and I doubt a few bars of soap and a paper windmill will stop them.
In fact, in a field close to where I am writing this, there is a crow scarer which goes off with monotonous regularity and the deer just walk past it, at about 3 pm, and graze near by.
The only way to stop them is to block off the tracks by use of a deer proof fence. We have recently completed one for customers in the village. Even though they loved looking at the deer through their windows they couldn’t grow a thing. They planted some laurel hedging and it was gone overnight so they gave up.
The 150 metre fence was 1.8 m high and constructed from round timber posts and 1.2m stock fencing with straining wire above that at 150 mm intervals.
It also included two field gates and two pedestrian gates. The fence went around the boundary and split the garden in two so one half was a meadow area where the deer could wander and the other half, a garden where things could grow.
Within a couple of weeks of completing the fence, our clients rang us to say plants had already started to shoot and had not been eaten. They are looking forward to planting areas, which beforehand would have been pointless, and enjoying their garden.
There is only one problem now the deer have had to re route. The neighbours have a major deer infestation. You never know, we might get another fencing job.
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