Kit, I don't like the concept of having plants in the landscape that are so borderline for a given area that they need heroic efforts to get them through the winter. I like stuff that's well-adapted to a given locale. Thus, for me, all wrappings, cloth, burlap, styrofoam cones, etc. is just a lot of clutter that I don't wish to see for months on end. As for chicken wire surrounds for herbivory protection, sure, that should work, but I would not fill the resulting enclosures with leaves. Again, why grow plants that need to be fussed with when there are so, so very many that are just fine without? Just my opinion, but there it is.

+oM

Depending on where you are, winter protection schemes can do much more harm than good. Where I am, what you are talking about is a good way to kill plants. The leaves hold too much moisture when the temperature is above freezing, and the resulting wet environment is ideal for certain types of fungus.

Kitasei, I've seen plants protected in the manner you're speaking of.....cages of chicken wire filled with something. You need to be careful that the fill doesn't mat down and turn into a sludge. It's the air that is the insulator.

I know what scrim is but haven't felt it with my own hands. It seems like it would work. The object is that the material breathes and that you use enough of it to be of insulating value. That's why burlap is so useful.

What is your location? If snow or ice load is an issue, that involves a different kind of plan. Are the shrubs evergreen or deciduous?

I have a handful of borderline plants and am more than happy to perform the few (un-heroic) tasks needed to protect them.

My best deer protection for a large group of plants has been Bobbex, a spray on repellent that has been very effective for me against deer, rabbits, and even voles. Read and follow the directions carefully.

OK, I am persuaded to abandon the idea of leaves. That leaves the question of cloth vs. burlap.

Perhaps it's different in other parts of the country, but in recent years the quality of available burlap has declined significantly. The individual strands are lighter gauge and weave is much looser so that it rips easily when stapled and sags and tears under the weight of snow. At a local farm and garden store, I learned that a 100 yard roll weighs about 25% less than a few years ago. Scrim material should be fine as long as the enclosure is open at the top and the material does not come in direct contact with the plants. How well it will hold up from repeated cycles of wetting and drying is another question. If you want something that can be wrapped directly around the plants themselves without the need for stakes, use air and water permeable landscape fabric.

The OP still hasn't stated zone or location.

I'm in zone 6b, which made me wonder if Bobbex can work here in the winter. The website says it has to be applied between 35 and 65 degrees, every two months in non-growing season.

In the 6B I used to live in, those were very normal daytime highs for the winter. You probably live some where else, but what do we know. My current deer would just shred anything short of wire mesh to get at the goodies.

You're right. Even the most brutal winter here (in the lower Hudson Valley) gets many days above freezing, so I guess that's all that's needed to re-apply. But is your experience that sprays won't work? The sequence of destruction has been consistent in the three years I've been here. First go the euonymus. Which some might think a favor, I know, but since it's an inherited hedge, it's been a drag to start from scratch every spring... It's in a place that won't be very attracted covered, so I thought I'd try the Bobbex there.

Kitasei, if you want to add location info to all your postings automatically, it can be added to your profile:

Go to Your Houzz in upper right of every page, click Edit Profile, and on the left side click advanced settings. Well down the advanced settings page is a blank labeled Climate Zone for Garden Forums along with a link to find your zone.

If you add info on your state or the nearest large city you will get even better information since zone only relates to average coldest winter temperatures.

Then return to the top of the page and click Done Editing.

So here's some deer herbivory protection I came up with: We're planting "pods" of native swamp conifers in select areas around some of our stormwater stream restorations, ponds, etc. consisting of tamarack and N. white cedar. The latter in particular is a well-known deer winter food. So, we place polygons of T-posts around the pod, then attach tiers of baler twine from post to post to post, all the way around the unit. We repeat until we've got perhaps 5 or 6 tiers of twine, making sure to start down low, as deer are routinely able to scoot under fences. So far-and perhaps that's the key phrase here-this has worked. Now, some well-meaning folks had said to me along the way that "deer can easily jump over that" or words to that effect. I always replied...it's not what deer can do, it's what they will do. Often, it seems just some kind of disturbance, something that doesn't feel right to them is sufficient to have them go look elsewhere for a nibble. So far, so good, with some of these things now being in place 4 years.

+oM

For maybe 3 or 4 hundred dollars you can enclose a fairly big area with 10' high, black plastic deer fencing stapled to peeler poles - and be more or less done with the deer, other than keeping the mesh in position as needed. The mesh doesn't show that much (deer will often bound into it without seeing it, with the resulting confusion perhaps having an additional deterrent effect) and the poles are just shafts of wood standing there.

If you have yearly access to adequately sized and shaped conifer boughs you can arrange those over vulnerable plants to cut the wind and block some of the sun during frigid periods.

I don't generally have issues with deer, but one year I had some nibbles. I read somewhere about mixing one of the sprays to keep deer away with Wilt-pruf since the Wilt-pruf keeps the stinky deer spray from washing away. (I don't usually get days above freezing for much of December-February.) I tried it, but don't know if it worked or the deer that were nibbling moved on.