Oh, that's so sad to hear. I'm sorry they got your 'tunias. We trapped 5 of them earlier in the season and my neighbor relocated them to the state forest. Then when the fox family moved in, I had no more worries about bunnies, squirrels, or woodchucks. I did see a squirrel on my blueberry bushes yesterday eating berries but I don't think he'll be around long enough to do any serious damage.
Hope your petunias recover.

Thank you gardenweed. I'll water them and see what happens.

Just now I went to the back yard and there was a mid sized one. He ran down into the drain that goes into the ground from the gutters on the house. Where do those drains go? I dropped a rock to see if I could hear anything and it went quite a ways. I wonder if he'll come out in the Connecticut river or something! At my old place the gutters drained into the yard, but these at my new place go into the ground and I don't see them coming out anywhere. I had disconnected this one so that the downspout would drain into a water barrel.

Sorry to hear about your petunias...the same thing happened to my petunias first year I tried growing them...petunias seem to be major groundhog candy. Now I plant them in hanging baskets far up above groundhog-level, and can finally grow petunias again.

Sounds like your drain pipe is a perfect pre-dug tunnel for groundhogs. Our local groundhog family also seems to scurry into a drainpipe that must end lead to an area not encased by the pipe somewhere below ground.

The groundhogs in our yard had three or four babies this spring, and they've all been eating everything in sight! Arrghh! I sympathize.

But I have a lot of Monarda/Beebalm from planting it over the years and the groundhogs in our yard don't seem to eat it. In general they seem to avoid anything minty like various kinds of salvia or sage, mountain mint, etc. The groundhogs in our yard also don't seem to eat heuchera or hosta, lilies, sedum, or peonies.

Luckily I winter-sowed lots of Monarda for my first year winter-sowing...next year I plan to winter-sow more salvia and other minty stuff!

Topie, that's good to know about the minty plants. I don't have any monarda, but maybe I will sow some this winter.

Someone suggested putting smelly used cat litter in their burrows, so I cleaned out my cat's box and put it where I could tell they were coming out.

I also poured ammonia into mason jars and put a sponge in to act like a wick, then placed them around my cherry brandy ruds and coneflowers. I know this worked for raccoons when I was living in the city.

We had a groundhog too and had to hire a professional to rid our yard
Of groundhogs https://barneswildlifecontrol.com/groundhog-removal/

Groundhogs are horrible creatures. Last year a young one moved in under my shed and ate all my tomatoes before I could even get one off the vines. He did this for 2 weeks before I was able to get rid of him.

A neighbor a few blocks up told that a pair of them live in the backyard by his house. He also said I should just leave him alone and let him eat whatever he wants. "Their cute and harmless! Let him eat whatever he wants! You can go to the store and buy whatever you need." It took a lot of willpower not to punch the little ******* in the face. I didn't raise heirloom tomotoes from seed just to feed all the fresh tomatoes to a smug, furry beast.

"They're" not "their".

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