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 In my last column, I wrote about deer in my garden. Despite the four-legged visitors, I am really enjoying my flower beds this year. As you may know, we run a greenhouse business in Kirkwood. My husband and I took over the reins from my parents and moved into their house in 2012 when they left the farm after 50+ years.

There is a large hillside garden that leads from the kitchen door all the way up to the greenhouses. Easily 500 feet long by 300 feet deep, but not a perfect rectangle. It is too steep to mow and partially shaded, so years ago dad planted daylilies and daffodils for seasonal color, a large Blue Atlas cedar, a yellow-foliage false cypress, a pink-flowering dogwood and a few other broadleaf evergreen shrubs. A nice layer of mulch every few years kept the weeds at bay.

When we moved in, the dogwood was big enough to provide some shade, so we planted tiarella and lamium underneath. A fragrant viburnum blew over in a windstorm, opening up a spot. Large rhododendrons had to go when we replaced the roof. and Crape myrtles that never flowered because they didn’t get enough sun, also got yanked out. Then I ran out of steam. The kids were little, and we were figuring out running the business. My son, Liam, had a short stint as a free-range chicken farmer. To say the chickens wreaked havoc upon the garden is an understatement. The weeds took over.

A few years ago we gifted the chickens to a friend and rolled up our sleeves. We pulled weeds, planted hundreds of perennials, mulched and mulched and mulched. We added a slate walking path to break up the depth, a few shrubs for more bird cover from the cats and tried to stick to a color scheme of yellow and purple.

This year is Year 3 of taking care of the garden. In April the daffodils were sunny yellow bright spots. In May, there wasn’t much happening except a stunning blue lupine, foxgloves and some lady’s mantle. I had to laugh as usually May is the month that most flowers are blooming. Dad always preached walk around the garden center once a month and take home a few blooming plants to ensure you have color all year. Since most of my yard work can’t happen until the greenhouse work slows down in late June-July, I didn’t plant many spring-bloomers. I fell into the trap of only selecting what was in flower.

Unfortunately, we had to take down the pink dogwood this year. It had been plagued with anthracnose, a foliar fungal disease, the last few years. This opened a sunny spot for some blue flowering baptisia, pink coreopsis, wine cups and salvia. May bloom problem fixed.

June and July brought on a succession of coneflowers, Russian sage, hyssop, balloon flowers, coreopsis, and Joe Pye weed. Looking out my kitchen window over the expanse of blooming flowers, I have dozens and dozens of butterflies. Still to come on are ‘October Skies’ and Tartarian asters, silver and gold ajania and some ornamental grasses. The rains of the last few weeks have certainly helped prolong the summer bloom and loosened the soil so weeding is easier. There is nothing like pulling weeds to relieve the stress of worrying about what is going to happen with school, the election and the pandemic. I can almost pretend life is back to normal.

My garden has been a work in progress, but very much a labor of love. This year it is loving me back when I most needed it.

I like to drink my morning coffee on the patio. Looking out over the garden, I pull a few weeds and appreciate the flowers before it gets hot. I love to watch the butterflies visiting the Agastache, coneflowers and coreopsis. A pair of Baltimore Orioles nested in the sycamore this spring, and hummingbirds now dart amongst the flowers. The one piece of wildlife I was not happy to see in my garden last week was a doe. We live on 55 acres, at least 20 of them are meadow and woods. Why did she need to be in the garden munching on my hostas?

One of the questions we get most frequently is how to deal with deer in the garden. As our developments encroach further into their habitats and hunted farmland acres decrease, more and more deer find themselves in our neighborhoods and gardens. Some of them are almost tame. A friend of mine routinely posts on social media herds of deer in her yard within feet of her house.

Deer are entirely herbivorous ruminants, with a four-chambered stomach like a cow. They eat quickly, filling their first stomach in one to two hours. At this point they regurgitate their partially digested food, lie down and chew their cud. Several more passes though their digestive system and the plant material is fully broken down and all nutrients are absorbed.

Favorites on the list of garden plants are hostas, daylily buds and tulips, but deer will eat most anything give the opportunity and their level of hunger. Rutgers University has put together a nice list of garden trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals ranked on four levels: Rarely Damaged, Seldom Severely Damaged, Occasionally Severely Damaged and Frequently Severely Damaged. I’m really glad they didn’t use degrees of resistance because unless it is plastic, deer will have eaten it at one time or another. Here is the web address for the list (https://njaes.rutgers.edu/deer-resistant-plants/).

Plants on the Rarely Damaged list fall into several categories. Aromatic foliage often deters browsing like the leaves of ornamental onion, salvia, thyme, catmint, hyssop and spicebush. Poisonous plants like hellebores, foxglove, angel’s trumpet and flowering tobacco keep deer at bay. Deer do not seem to enjoy spiny or rough textured plants like bear’s breeches, holly, cactus, and barberry. Plants with irritating sap like milkweed, rue, and tansy are also generally left alone.

Keeping deer out of the garden is often easier said than done. Physical barriers such as a fence at least eight feet in height are the most effective, albeit expensive, option. Chemical barriers often contain some combination of stinky ingredients such as egg, fish emulsion, garlic and hot pepper to dissuade browsing rabbits and deer. These concoctions work well but are not often rain fast and need to be re-applied frequently. My parents used to sprinkle hair clippings from the local barber around the fruit trees years ago, but as deer become less wary of people, human hair is not as effective.

One thing we have noticed is that deer are creatures of habit and often follow the same path. If you can identify specific areas deer travel through your property, you can site their favorite flowers away from those areas.

In only a few short months bow season will open. We feed the deer most of the year, through the winter they feed us.

Over the last 30 years ornamental grasses have been gaining ground in American gardens. Famed garden writers and designers Piet Oudolf and Chester County’s own Rick Darke can take much of the credit.

Rick Darke currently operates a garden design business in Landenberg with a focus on conservation and planting in harmony with the natural landscape. One of his most notable designs is portions of New York’s elevated railroad-turned-park the High Line in coordination with Piet Oudolf. This garden incorporates many Northeast native plants in flowing swaths utilizing four seasons of interest. He is also responsible for designs at Chicago Botanic Garden, Pittsburg Botanic Garden, and other gardens across the country. He served over 20 years at Longwood Gardens in various roles and was Curator of Collections for his last ten years there. Rick has written many books, three about ornamental grasses alone.

Rick has also collaborated with Doug Tallamy, Entomology professor at University of Delaware famous for promoting natural gardening and keeping wildlife in balance. Their book, The Living Landscape, is a must-read for anyone interested in beautifully incorporating native plants, in the backyard garden.

Piet Oudolf, a famed Dutch plant breeder, designer and nurseryman follows the theory of “instinct inspired from nature” and “purposeful abandon”. Many of his designs incorporate a color palate of plants interplanted informally, but in swaths or ribbons to guide the eye through a garden. Some of his most famous gardens are Millennium Park in Chicago, the High Line in New York, his own garden, Hummelo in the Netherlands, and many others scattered across Europe.

Both men utilize ornamental grasses extensively in their designs. Grasses lend themselves well to any garden because their fine texture contrasts well with a myriad of flower shapes, bolder textured shrubs and can give movement to a garden. While grasses are deciduous, their stiff stems and seed heads stand up well over the winter to all but the heaviest snow, creating visual interest in the garden well past the normal gardening season.

Grasses fall into two main categories: cool season and warm season. Cool season grasses come up early in the spring and begin to flower in midsummer. These plants can be planted earlier in the spring, and later into the fall months as they tolerate cooler temperatures when getting established. Examples of cool season grasses are blue fescue ‘Elijah Blue’, Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and Deschampsia. Native pony tail grass and wildrye are both cool season grasses. During extreme heat, they may go dormant but then show new growth as fall brings cooler temperatures and rain. Pony tails (Nasella tenuissima) is a favorite of Oudolf, its short stature and wispy seed heads feature prominently in many of his designs.

Warm season grasses are slower to wake up in the spring and need warm soil to establish. These are best planted late May- early September when soil and air temperatures are both warm. In contrast to cool-season grasses which generally flower in June, warm season grasses bloom in the fall. There are many native warm season grasses such as little bluestem (Schizachrium scoparium), switch grass (Panicum), pink Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia) and prairie dropseed (Sporobilis). Maiden grass (Miscanthus) is another popularly used warm season grass. It can get large in a garden however and will need dividing periodically.

Shade tolerant grasses and sedges are fewer in number, but still offer many choices of Carex, Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa), and sweet flag (Acorus) for your landscape. Darke favors member of the Carex family as many of the native species play an important role in the wildlife ecology. For example, Carex pennsylvanica hosts 36 different caterpillars and C. plantaginea is a larval host for skipper butterflies. Carex are cool season and flower in early summer. Their seed heads make good food sources for bird and other wildlife. Japanese forest grass is warm season and is grown for it arching colorful leaves. Its flowers are inconspicuous and come on just before the season comes to its end.

Grasses have earned a spot in most landscapes whether it is a prairie recreation or a more formal space and I am thankful to both Piet Oudolf and Rick Darke for promoting them to more widespread use.