My garden is meant to be welcoming to wildlife. That’s why I’m growing so many native plants, and why I built a natural pond last year. I want bugs to eat my plants, and I care a lot about maintaining a healthy ecosystem here.

However….

For the past several nights, somebody has been raiding my pond. The first morning I noticed bites taken out of some of the floating water hyacinths, and a couple of the submerged pots were knocked over. The second night it was more of the same, and both of my solar fountains had been flipped over and submerged in the pond. I was able to retrieve one of them, but the spray nozzle on top of the newest one is somewhere in the muck at the bottom and I can’t get it without totally messing up the pond. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t begrudge anyone for drinking out of the pond or even nibbling a few of the plants, but those floating plants and the fountains are important to the health of the pond, so this is concerning.

My first guess was that a raccoon was coming in, because I found raccoon scat in my garden recently, and I figured their little hands could easily reach in to get to those water hyacinths and mess around with the fountains. It’s interesting though because those fountains don’t spray at night, so I’m not sure why any animal would have interest in them.

I have a security camera pointed towards my driveway, but I moved it onto a small table beside the pond and two nights in a row caught images of a large black cat drinking out of the pond. I wondered if that was the culprit, but I didn’t really think so. I waited another day.

This morning I walked into my sunroom and saw a deer inside my fenced backyard, eating the native serviceberry shrubs that I’ve patiently nurtured for several years. I went running into the backyard in my pajamas, yelling at the deer and clapping at her. She stood chewing on a shrub, looking at me as if I were a statue. Yes, you can laugh at that image. She could not have cared less. When I continued yelling at her and walking towards her, she took a couple steps toward me and stomped her foot. At this point she was standing just a few feet from the 3-foot fence on the side of the yard. I’m assuming that’s the way she came in because the rest of the yard has a 6-foot fence. (Our municipal code doesn’t allow a fence higher than 3 feet on the road-adjacent side of my property.) I know that deer can easily jump a 6-foot fence, but there’s no access from the other side of the fence for her to get to my yard because of sheds and other obstacles in the neighbors’ yards.

So I got the hose and that did the trick, as she effortlessly leaped over the fence. Probably stuck her tongue out at me too, just to let me know she’ll be back.

I immediately went to investigate the pond, and found my dwarf cattails completely ripped out of their pot and shredded. Pieces of them were floating in the water and the water itself was all muddy. It’s possible the deer stepped down into the pond, and if so, there could be damage to the liner below. That would be very problematic, both expensive and difficult to repair. I guess I’ll find out if the pond starts losing water. The frustrating part is that the security camera didn’t record anybody at the pond last night, despite obvious damage. That’s what I get for buying a cheap camera I guess.

I’ve lived here seven years and have never seen evidence of deer getting into my backyard before. I have plenty of rabbits, and I have to protect many of my small shrubs and new plantings with cages because the rabbits are voracious consumers of tender plants. The deer have been in my front yard frequently lately, and that’s also unusual. Until a couple years ago I hadn’t seen them very often in my neighborhood at all, although other neighbors told me they had them in their yards regularly. I thought my fence would discourage them from entering the back, but now I know it won’t. Apparently the lure of the pond is too much to resist.

So clearly I’m picking and choosing which “wildlife” I’m willing to support in my “wildlife” garden. It doesn’t feel good to do that, but I’m not sure we can even consider some of these deer to be wildlife anymore, considering how adapted they are to residential areas. When I first moved to Michigan 24 years ago and found out that they did regular deer culling, I was initially upset about it. But over the years I have realized that those culls are necessary because these semi-domesticated deer reproduce too fast in cities where there are no predators to control their populations. They do deer culls here in Toledo too. They become a problem not only for our gardens but for conservation areas that need protecting. And when there are too many deer, there are more incidents of them being hit by cars, which is tragic for the deer as well as the passengers in the car sometimes.

I’m a tiny bit hopeful about a technique I discovered today when researching the problem. Tom Bartels, a gardener in Colorado, came up with this concept of a “psychological deer fence”. He explains how the deer scope out the other side of a fence before jumping it, to make sure it’s safe. He says, “The deer are checking out their LANDING ZONE. Their legs are all important. And they won’t jump anything that will jeopardize the health of their legs.”

It sounds promising, so I went to the hardware store today to buy rope and stakes to rig it up in my yard. Hopefully you can see the green rope in the photo below. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it works. Tom Bartels says he hasn’t had a deer jump his fence in eight years. Stay tuned for updates on this experiment.

Just to be extra safe, I’m establishing a new evening routine of removing the fountains from the pond (after the replacement fountains arrive, that is). I’ll keep the security camera on the pond for the time being too, despite its intermittent functioning. And I’ll be spraying Liquid Fence around the garden. If you’ve not heard of that product before, it’s a natural deer and rabbit repellent that I’ve had success with in other gardens. Its main ingredients are “putrescent egg solids” and garlic, and it repels by scent as well as taste. It definitely smells pretty foul at first, but the scent dissipates quickly and isn’t bothersome to me, even with my scent sensitivities.

In other, more exciting news, I’m trying my hand at growing a bed of zinnias this year for the first time. They’re not native here, of course, but I’ve always admired their beauty and I know they’ll bring a lot of pollinators to the yard. I planted a bunch of seeds last Sunday and discovered some little seedlings are already up just seven days later. Because of the rabbits, I erected some fencing around the zinnia bed today as well.

Aren’t gardens a grand adventure? Regardless of what kind of gardens we have, we all experience successes and setbacks. There are so many opportunities for learning in a garden, especially when you love bugs, as I do! And you may be surprised to find out that, despite my new deer problems, I’m considering putting in a second pond next month, even closer to the fence. Am I crazy or just determined? I dunno. But I’ve marked out a potential site for it, and am mulling it over.

“The first pond brought me so much joy immediately, I know my life could be even more exciting with two of them.”

Famous last words of a naive and stubborn garden dork

Here’s a short video of one of the rewards of my pond this spring, a white-throated sparrow investigates the perimeter as a robin sits in the water — this is what it’s all about!

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