Yucca 'Color Guard'

It would help to identify 'zactly what kind of animal is doing the munching :-) Deer lean to some plants, bunnies to others, mountain beavers to anything that grows. Is the plant just chewed or consumed?

FWIW, plants with strong essential oils - many herbs like lavender, rosemary, tarragon - and those with a thick or sticky sap - euphorbias, some poppies, milkweed - tend to be avoided by most plant-munching creatures, as do plants with fuzzy foliage (lamb's ear, artemisia, oriental poppies).

This is some of the stuff that almost never gets touched in my garden:

Salvia
Yarrow
Coreopsis
Monarda
Peonies (hard to grow in pots, tho)
Russian Sage
Liatris
Helenium
Astilbe

While I don't really do pots, except for herbs, I do have a ton of deer, chipmunks, and rabbits. If you have groundhogs eating your stuff that's a different ballpark.

Another option would be to spray with stinky stuff at night before you go in -- by the morning you won't be able to smell it, but the critters will.

Actually, scratch the liatris -- I recall now that when it was young some rabbits did munch it.

It is not deer, I haven't seen a deer in 2 years. It is also unlikely to be a ground hog, since I have never seen one.

There are tons of rabbits this year, but I do not think it is rabbits, since the pots sits high and I never seen a rabbit climb up to a pot.

It is most likely a gray squirrel, since I have seen one destroy a baby lily, and it returned again the next day and destroy another baby lily. Spraying the plant doesn't seemed to help. I thought it would leave an adult lily alone, but apparently not.

Paul

All of my pots have been destroyed except for the rose. I can't tell why they do it.

Well, the question is, is the plant being eaten, of just being trashed while the squirrel looks for a place to bury its stash of nuts/seeds/cones/berries. That is what I fight with some of my containers, squirrels and chipmunks LOVE the soft, fresh dirt. They aren't eating the plants, just trashing them while they dig holes to bury things. Then, to add insult to injury, I end up having all kinds of little clumps of things germinate in there -- lately it has been black oil sunflowers and sorghum they pick out of the birdseed.

Your only real options are barriers or trapping. If they are just digging the soil and you don't have too many pots, try cutting circles of hardware cloth to lay over the soil, with a small cutout to let the plant grow through. If they are trashing the whole plant, you COULD in theory make a cylinder of chicken wire or hardware cloth to surround the pot, but that would be an ugly thing to look at, plants in cages. Personally, I would go with trap and remove, trap and exterminate, or whatever method is legal in your state and municipality. I need to do the same, but just haven't, I've got my 2 live traps baited for woodchuck but haven't caught him yet.

Cayanne pepper sprinkled around the soil surface in your pot will likely deter a squirrel.
For a really big plant, you may want to use netting. It is almost invisable. I am about to put bird netting around my cherry tomato pot.
I really hate squirrels...

well,I have been going thru the same ,
take your pick...coons,opossoms,skunks and finally the ground hog...it's been a big headache this year. I never had this problem before and we've lived on this place for 55 years

well,I have been going thru the same ,
take your pick...coons,opossoms,skunks and finally the ground hog...it's been a big headache this year. I never had this problem before and we've lived on this place for 55 years

Put gravel or rocks on top of the soil in your pots. I do that to keep birds from nesting. You can even make it decorative. I've used round river rocks and I've even spray painted gravel to make it look colorful for a quick fix.

Cameron

Here is a link that might be useful: purple gravel in lavender container

As per the below blog post I came across (not my blog) you might want to scratch the peonies as well. Although the author suspects deer ate them.

Here is a link that might be useful: peony buds eaten by deer