The Egnew residence is located Palenville, New York at the foothills of the Northern Catskill mountains.
CHALLENGE
After the site visit and with the client preferences in hand, a couple of challenges stood out; the request for a low maintenance woodland garden and anticipated deer pressure.
Even a low maintenance garden will require some work; mowing (the meadow annually and req lawns weekly), raking (fall cleanup of pathways/parking), weeding (pathways/parking), pruning (trees, climbers and shrubs nearby the house). But how far these tasks are pushed is up to the individual.
A woodland garden implies the typical woodland animals are welcome, and thus we have to think about how they shape their landscape and what plants we can insert ‘safely’ into that environment. The site is a fence-less woodland setting near the base of the northern Catskill mountains, open to deer to enter and browse.
I built a list of plants that I cautiously call ‘Deer Proof’; cautiously because what is true in my case, may not work in someone else’s situation. These are plants that I have grown on my own property in the northern Catskills for about 7 seasons, while exposed to constant deer pressure. The one criteria for a plant to be on this list is that it has never – not once – been browsed. Use this list as a guide in your selection of plants, and observations about the deer in your area.
Although I make an effort to use native and climate change resilient plant selections, these criteria has come in second to specific client plant requests, ‘low maintenance’ and ‘deer proof’.