Have tried everything. Feeling like the movie Caddy Shack! Ha! Would it be possible to put down chicken wire or mesh in bottom of hole before planting?

Yes. It may be your only defense.

It is possible, and I've planted all of my roses and bulbs in wire cages for that purpose, but gophers can also travel overland, so they could burrow down into your mesh-lined spots. They recently learned that trick in my garden, walking over to the roses and burrowing down into the cage to eat the roots.

Yeah, I have used the cages (a cylinder with a bottom that you put in the hole before the plant). They have made possible certain plants (mainly agaves) which were otherwise impossible, given the local fauna. But I have noticed the same thing as Zuzu, where the animals figure out that they just have to jump the fence, so to speak, and then they dig right down inside the cylinder and leave the plant sitting on top of the soil rootless.

I would recommend an owl house or recruiting some other local predator. A friend of ours put up an owl house (basically a box on a tall pole, from what I could tell) and a couple months later little bones started piling up beneath it. She is quite happy with the results in her garden.

I'm going to say it.... Traps?

In my extensive experience, it is almost impossible to get rid of gophers, but trapping may be worth the trouble, if you are dealing with a small area.

I have totally given up on control. Maybe one day I'll try an owl house. For now all I can do is try to protect the vulnerable plants with cages. There's a whole lot of gopher habitat around the planted areas here. The soil is very sandy so they can build elaborate underground networks. Traps are pretty cruel, in my opinion, except live traps, which I rely on for squirrels and mice. One of the problems with gophers (as opposed to ground squirrels, which we have too) is that they hide the entrances to their home, making it almost impossible to figure out or control where they live, without a whole lot of close inspection.

Penny ! Howdy !
Gophers ! Dirty little boogers !
Lets get em #!!!
Im gonna tell you an ol farmers trick !
1st. Go to your local barber/beauty salon.
Have they save you a bag of hair.
Take a wad of hair and stuff it down every gopher mound. The mounds are fluffy cause that lets air into bourrow. Gopher wants to open mound. Gophers dig with there teeth. Gopher injests some human hair whilst opening mound. Gopher cant digest hair. AND ! end of gopher ###😈
Otherwise.. Build a raised bed on top of some galvanized half inch hardware wire.
I believe gopher would chew through chicken wire and it would rust perty quick.
😎😎😎

My experience with traps is (A) there is a learning curve, (B) it is cruel, (C)The best thing to do with the bodies (if you get one) is to stuff them back in the hole ( ew) to prevent any other gophers from using it, and (D) if that all works any hungry coyotes will steal trap and gopher.

Cat poop down there hole is suspose to work !

Dream on...

None of the old wives tales work, sorry to say.
I use a Cinch trap. Sometimes they are sprung with nothing in them but the dirt the gopher shoved out ahead of him but I keep trying and won't give up and eventually am successful.