Posted on 08/28/2005 2:10:59 PM PDT by Coleus
N.J. Botanical Garden tests ways to thwart deer
| Sunday, April 17, 2005 |
RINGWOOD - One of the main attractions at the New Jersey Botanical Garden, the garden of annual flowers, is edged most of the way around by a pock-marked bare patch where a yew hedge once grew.
It's going to cost $13,000 to fill it up with a hedge of the Green Mountain variety of boxwood.
If you were to ask why this is necessary, Rich Flynn, landscape designer at Ringwood State Park, which includes the botanical garden as well as Skylands Manor, would look you in the eye and calmly answer with one word: deer.
Flynn's tone would not betray anger because dealing with the effects of deer is an immutable job hazard for any horticulturist in North Jersey whose garden lies near woods (the botanical garden is surrounded by forest).
Flynn has been trying to prevent deer from mutilating the state's showcase garden in all his 17 years there, but in the last few years he's escalated his defenses.
He's tried fencing and sprays to keep the deer away. Guard dogs would help, but "we can't do that here," Flynn wryly remarked during a stroll around the grounds last week. So he's resorted to ripping out some flowers and hedges and replacing them with deer-resistant plants.
"Many plants are said to be deer-resistant," Flynn said. "Some say the day lily is resistant, but go elsewhere and deer love 'em. They seem to get a taste for it, like people do for hot food. So my advice is not to go out and buy a lot of those plants until you've tested them. Buy one and see if the deer leave it alone. If that works, then go ahead."
He has found that boxwood seems to be "deer-proof," and that is why he is replacing the yew hedge around the annual garden.
"You would think," Flynn mused, "that they could find the chemical in boxwood that the deer don't like, synthesize it and inject it in other plants. ... "
The gardening season has already started in North Jersey, and events at the state's botanical garden are getting started as well. Next weekend there will be an Earth Day cleanup and the weekend after that the Skylands Association of volunteers will hold its annual plant sale.
Flynn's crew has been getting ready, and much of the work has focused on removing fencing intended to prevent deer browsing during winter, when much of the edible plants in the surrounding woods are covered with snow.
In the annual garden next to the visitor's center, for instance, the corners are hedged with arborvitae. They are perhaps 10 feet tall and make nice shelters for benches from which visitors can admire the annual plants.
But Flynn knows that arborvitae are favorites for deer, so around each patch he and his crew installed fencing last October. They staked the fences close to arborvitae, not giving deer room to hop over.
A few branches of the arborvitae were destroyed by deer nevertheless, because snow bent them to dining-room-table level for the animals. A fence deters deer, Flynn said, but doesn't always work - if they are very hungry, they sometimes will knock down a fence.
Flynn has learned to avoid planting what he calls "candy" for deer, such as hosta, tulips, rhododendron and yews.
"You don't see tulips here, ever," he said. "Up at Magnolia Walk, we had to take out the hostas. The deer would eat them down to where they looked like celery stalks."
He pointed out, however, that there is a rhododendron, hosta and azalea garden - surrounded by a heavy permanent fence with a self-locking gate.
One of the most deer-proof flowers, according to Flynn, is the daffodil, which is why you'll see lots of daffodils at the New Jersey Botanical Garden.
He noted that woodchucks also avoid picking on daffodils. He further recommended forsythia, Pieris andromeda, Colorado spruce and Cephalotaxus as deer-resistant plants.
For more specific lists of deer-resistant flowers and other plants, Flynn advises amateur gardeners to check Web sites of commercial nursery stores in the area, or ask at the stores in person.
Flynn has one other problem with deer, and it can be seen on one of the best features of the botanical garden, a 1,600-foot allée called Crab Apple Vista. The walk is lined with 156 Malus "pink spire" crab apples. A few have been damaged by male deer scraping the felt from their antlers; sometimes the crab apples are killed.
"This one is dead," Flynn said, kneeling to examine the damage to the small tree's bark. "So now we have to buy tree wrap for the trunks."
What is a botanical garden without a cafeteria that serves venison, I say.
Flintstone?
What an idiot. Plant healthy vegetation and provide plenty of water and wonder why the deer come. There's hundreds of deer fences in Texas that do a fine job. It's not rocket science.
I'm moving to a house that backs to parkland. I've seen deer, groundhogs, wild turkey, chipmonks, rabbits and all the regular suburban wildlife (no bears... yet!).
I'm wondering if I'll be able to grow anything in my yard!
Maybe I'll just pave it all over and feel like I'm back in Bayonne!
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