I put a cylinder of wire fencing around my baby roses, and pin the fencing down with bent wires. Once the rose really gets going the cylinder doesn't show.

18" is tall enough to protect them from those wasckly wabbits.

What size fencing, hoovb? I suppose you mean chicken wire. The spaces between wires would have to be small to keep out the wabbits and squirrels.

Use "hardware cloth" as it is called. It is a kind of wire screening with large openings about 1 inch square. Also comes in 1/2" square. It's stronger than chicken wire and can stand on its own as a cylinder if a cat or rabbit decides to lean against it.

My method is very low-tech and not very sightly, but on the other hand it doesn't cost anything. When I prune I use the thorny clippings to make barriers around the roses so that they're completely encircled with the branches. It works perfectly, and once the rose is large enough not to interest them I remove the barrier.

Ingrid

That is a good idea, Ingrid. I did something similar. When the snow melted, I scratched around in the mulch and found the rose stems. I put stakes, 3 or 4, around each, to keep out marauding grandbabies. I just moved here, so don't have any large prunings yet. If this were the West Coast, there would be blackbery canes to spare! I think this year, hardware cloth is the way to go. Thank you for the suggestion, hoovb and carol.

I have a beastly problem with squirrels chewing on my 1/2" poly irrigation system and on my new spring canes. I was ready to wrap more hardware cloth around the poly connectors, when a friend said use cayenne pepper. She had the wiring harness on her new Mustang chewed by squirrels. The mechanic said to sprinkle the cayenne around under the hood which she did and again in a couple of months. No more damage. You have to reapply after rain though. I would use the hardware cloth like Hoovb AND the pepper in hopes that the pepper will discourage them from ever coming back - permanently.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

I intend to use hardware cloth AND cayenne AND bloodmeal, which I was just reading today in Louise Riotte's Roses Love Garlic is also effective.

What about deer? Seriously - we built our house 25 years ago on the west slope of a ridge with a deer trail - at the time we enjoyed the occasional sightings. But they have worn a path down my property across the street, where it is all forest that eventually spills them across the state road and then onto the flats along the river.
Tuesday night, coming home at 10 oclock,had to stop at the foot of my own driveway cuz the herd was crossing the road. And they were taking their time. Deer in the headlights? sure, but they were sauntering across the road, not staring with fear.
Short of taking up a gun, any ideas?

Oh, Sunnyside, what a predicament. Don't have a clue unless it's hunting season. (No, that wouldn't be pretty.) Do they have a Relocation Program there? Anywhere but there?

But you told your story beautifully.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

My sister lives right down the road from me on heavily wooded acreage. She was having a problem with deer eating her hibiscus and roses. She keeps a 50 pound bag of corn around and has a couple of feeding stations away from her house. This seems to have done the trick. However, I don't think our deer are as large as northern deer, and it's just an accasional buck and a few does with babies. I guess this would get pretty pricey with a large herd. This way she gets to enjoy watching them without sacrificing her plants.

If you feed the deer, you will get more deer. They will have more babies and in a generation or two you have a population explosion. Feeding the deer may work in the short term but in the long term the problem will get worse.

The best way to protect a garden is to fence it, ideally with a dog roaming free on your side of the fence. It can be a tall fence or a double fence or a solid fence they cannot see past. Deer will not jump where they cannot see the landing place.

The other alternative is to grow exclusively plants that deer can not eat. Most of these are toxic plants such as oleander, though a few plants such as rosemary are simply so unpleasant that they avoid them. Many of the plants on deer-avoidance lists are merely less-preferred food, and they will eat them if they are hungry enough.

Deer love roses. All roses. They like some roses better than others. They will leave the less-preferred roses such as rugosas until last, but if that is all they can get, they'll eat rugosas.

Rosefolly

She's been doing this for several years and the number of deer hasn't increased. However, we are surrounded by citrus groves, and deer find young citrus leaves irresistable. My neighbors have had a terrible time with deer in their groves. I think that's why my sister doesn't have any more problem than she does.