Deer Protection, Sissinghurst-style

Do you have a problem with deer getting into your garden? Boy, do I understand how frustrating that can be! While in England last month, we saw a great idea that will afford your garden some deer protection without having to build a tall fence. Interested?

We saw this idea at Sissinghurst Castle Garden, which is one of my very favorite English gardens. This fencing was surrounding their edible garden. (the photo at the top of this post shows an overview of a type of fencing we saw.)

First, here’s the concept behind this idea:

I once read in a book that deer can jump high OR they can jump wide, but what they can’t do is jump high AND wide at the same time.

This method takes advantage of a deer’s fear of trying to jump over a wide obstacle. And now here’s an explanation of this fencing idea:

The gardeners have surrounded the garden with a relatively short fence (about 4′ tall). As many of you know, 4′ is essentially just a speed bump for deer.

But, if one were to plant shrubs either on the outside of the fence, or on both sides of the fence, it creates an insurmountable barrier to deer. Pretty slick, huh? And what’s even better is that the shrubs essentially hide most of the fence which makes this deer barrier quite attractive.

I recently produced a video on strategies for dealing with deer. Here it is in case you missed it:

I also wrote a column on the topic in May: Tricks to keep your garden from becoming a deer smorgasbord.

And here is a blog post that discusses another type of fencing to keep deer out of your garden: Dealing with deer.