Our new invisible deer fence

For all those who have been wondering how we've been faring in our battle to protect our new flowerbed from groundhog attacks, there's good news and bad news. The good news is, the hot pepper spray we made to deter the little furballs seemed to be effective — against them. The bad news is, it does nothing at all to deter an even bigger pest: deer.

The deer population in our town has really grown out of control in recent years, and since the only predator normally keeping them in check is cars, the COVID pandemic has only accelerated the trend. As cars and people have retreated from the roads, the deer have grown bolder, walking straight into people's yards to eat anything that looks tasty (and barely budging even when humans come within a few yards of them). And apparently, that category decidedly includes several of the plants in our flowerbed. The Johnny-jump-ups (violas), apparently a particular favorite of deer, were pretty much demolished, and even the coneflowers, coreopsis, and yarrow — all purported to be deer-resistant — have not gone entirely unscathed.

So, when my weekly gardening newsletter from Mother Earth News tackled the subject of deer control, I read it with interest. To my surprise, there was actually one idea in it that seemed not only feasible, but quite easy and cheap. And that's how we ended up with this new deer fence around our flowerbed:

You can't see any fence there, you say? Well, neither can the deer, which is precisely the point.

You see, deer can jump over pretty much any fence they can see. Brian once spotted one in our back yard, which is surrounded by a chain link fence 4 to 6 feet high on all sides, and when it saw him, it leapt right over the fence like it wasn't there. Any solid fence tall enough to keep out deer entirely would also block out most of the sunlight — not to mention blocking our view of our plants, which would basically defeat their whole purpose.

However, when they walk into a barrier that they can't see, apparently, it completely freaks them out. Or at least, that was the experience of one Henry Barrett from Holly, New York, who told Mother Earth News in a letter that he had successfully kept deer out of his garden with a barrier made from "20-pound-test, monofilament fishing line" — one line strung around at a height of 4 feet, and another at 2 feet. The two lines form a barrier too high for the adult deer to step over and too low for the youngsters to walk under.

When I read that, I thought, "Hmm...if we put a post at the corner of the flowerbed, we could run fishing line from that post to the porch railings along the front of the bed, and from the post to the front end of the raspberry trellis on the other side." And Brian recalled that he had a suitable metal post, similar to the ones we'd used for the trellis, out in the shed, so all we would actually need to buy was some clear fishing line.

We found this easily enough at Dick's Sporting Goods, in the back corner of the store that Brian refers to as the "killing stuff" section, where they keep all the hunting and fishing gear. (Ironically, even though neither of us has ever hunted or fished, this is the part of the store we visit the most, since it's also where we go to refill the canister for my seltzer machine.) It cost us a mere $5, our only cost for the project, for 330 yards — way more than we could possibly need. As you can see, what we bought is 12 pound test, not 20, because we forgot to check the description before heading out to the store, but we figure it shouldn't matter too much. The purpose of the line isn't to keep the deer out by force; it's just to create a barrier that will "spook" them when they walk into it. And if it ends up breaking, oh well, we can go back and get some of the heavier stuff; it's still cheap.

The actual job of putting up the fence was pretty easy, too. The hardest part was hauling out the old metal post and pounding it into the ground at one corner of the flowerbed. (As you can see, it's not in such great shape, but when we checked new ones at Home Depot, they weren't significantly nicer, so we decided to just go with it.) This displaced one of the phone line insulators we'd used to create a decorative barrier around the bed, so we just stuck the extra resistor on the awkward sort of hook that sticks out from the top of the post. This hook was rusted in place, so we couldn't remove it, but having the resistor on top makes it easier to spot so we won't bump into it by accident. We can always hang a decorative basket or something on it later.

Then we simply tied one end of the fishing line to the railing...

...ran it around the post...

...and tied the other end to the top of the raspberry trellis.

We repeated the process with a second line at the 2-foot mark, and there it was: a new stealth fence to deter the deer. (It won't stop the groundhogs, of course, so we'll have to continue spraying the plants as well.)

Now all we have to do is wait and see if it works. Even if it's only partially effective, a solution that requires only a one-time investment of $5 and half an hour of work is hard to beat.