FL ...
I like to say that my deer fence is held up by wishful thinking. It is actually much more sturdy than it looks. It is basically 4 x 4 's with wire attached to the posts. Most of the wire is scrap wire. There is chicken wire, hog wire and other kinds of fencing wire. The reason that fence works is that on my side of the fence, the slope is covered by junipers and the deer don't think they have a place to land, so they don't even try to jump it ... at least until this year.
My neighbor's grape vine died and exposed the one spot where a deer might think it could jump the fence and land. When the vine died, the top rail of the fence fell and sure enough one doe saw that she could get into the garden. She did and ate quite well until I got the fence repaired. It took three trips for my handyman and I to find all of the other possible entries into the garden that she found and block them. Once she found food, she was going to eat it ALL ...
Oh, well she's tried to find other entry points, but finally gave up.
The deer fencing I have out in front of the house ... deer territory ... was really quite inexpensive. It's just T-posts with wire that was given to me.
Here's a shot of what I call the "street rose" because it is located in one of my street beds. The rose is young and will eventually fill the space allocated. It's real name is 'Linda Campbell'.
I had to fence the roses that Mrs. J had planted and which had been deer pruned for years. I used the same T-post and wire method. I cut openings on the lawn side of the bed, which are held closed with small bungy cords, so that I could get down into the bed to work on the roses. So far, these roses have been safe from the deer.
I also do everything I can to convince the deer that my property is hostile territory.
Over time, I've written about the call of the rabid goose. Here's a post I made with some links about a buck that had decided he liked my view:
http://garden.org/thread/view_...
I doubt if the deer wars will ever be over.
