Master gardeners share tips for keeping deer at bay

BRETON BAY, Md. - In a proper setting, deer are serene, graceful and beautiful. But in a garden, they can be pesky and destructive.

How to keep deer from ruining gardens is a common topic for master gardeners, said Ann Waring of Breton Bay. In the Master Gardener program, volunteer horticultural educators are trained by the University of Maryland Extension, the principal outreach education unit of the University of Maryland, according to the university's Web site.

"Oh, yes. We moan and groan and exchange ideas," says Waring, who has been a master gardener for 14 years.
Gardeners' dismay over deer comes as no surprise to George Timko, assistant deer project leader with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources' Wildlife and Heritage Service. Deer will eat just about anything, Timko said. The carefully cultivated landscaping and fresh vegetables prized by humans also are enticing to deer.

"The stuff we have in our yard is ice cream to them," Timko adds.

Maryland's deer population is estimated to be 230,000. Complaints about deer are so ubiquitous, Timko said, that they are "impossible" to count.

His office created a website to address the problem and outline recommendations. Methods to deter deer that gardeners share include pushing a bar of soap onto a tobacco stake and posting it in the middle of a garden in hopes the smell will repel the deer. Human hair can be sprinkled around the perimeter of a garden, some suggest, thereby leaving a human scent and perhaps spooking the deer. Others suggest placing metal screens or netting over plants. Some also use commercially available sprays, such as Liquid Fence or coyote urine.

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