Deer Proofing Your Roses. Deer damage and how to stop it.

There is nothing more annoying than waking up on a lovely morning to find someone's been nibbling and stripping the leaves of your Gertrude Jekyll's or munching new shoots on your Icebergs. Roses are a favourite of deer, so more than likely and certainly, in village gardens in the UK the culprit will almost certainly be them.

. To deer it seems, roses are the chocolate of their diet and they have become increasingly brazen in their attempts to attain their favourite snack and will eat your roses down to the bare skeletal framework of branches

Here in North Hampshire there are three types of deer Roe, Fallow, and the little Muntjac all of which are found in abounding numbers and will usually pay you a visit under cover of darkness.

I have heard of gardeners trying all sorts of extensive measures to keep the deer out. High fencing is an effective option. However, deer are cunning and they will soon realize if there is a hole or a gate left open. Electric fencing is another remedy but it is not always practical. There are also numerous liquid repellants on the market which need to be regularly reapplied and in my humble opinion are not that effective.

So let me tell you what works for me. To start with I use my CD on a stick trick. Simply attach an unwanted CD to a piece of string and hang it from a stick (see photo ) then place the stick on the border or by the roses you want to protect, making sure the CD can swing and turn freely. This certainly does the trick in the short term, a few weeks or so, and should work from day one and costs virtually nothing. It doesn't matter what is on the CD, you won't see the deer doing air guitar or an exercise workout, but it seems the rainbow shimmering reflection is what they don't like. The drawbacks are that they will get used to them after a while and they look a little bit unsightly.

They will get used to the CD trick as I say after a while so the other more permanent fixture that I've found to be the most effective of all the remedies on the market is the Jet Spray Repeller of which there are several different makes available. I use them all the time. It works by emitting an infrared beam just like a halogen lamp which when broken sprays a short burst of water from an attached hosepipe.

Most people have a hosepipe and an outside tap these days and it's simple to connect it up. Placed near the roses you want to protect, deer soon find out that it's not much fun being around this gadget when they get squirted and stop visiting your plants.





I have included some of the Jet spray repellers that are available from Amazon below                           

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