Resistant plant lists are worth reading and worth doubting, repellents wear off with the first rain, and a barrier is the only thing that reliably holds. Here is how to fence, trap, and deter the animals eating your garden, and what to leave alone.
Why do the "deer resistant" and "rabbit proof" lists keep failing me?
Because they describe preferences, not rules. Plants land on those lists because animals usually avoid them, either because they are somewhat toxic or because they taste bad, feel tough, or are hairy or dry. A hungry animal will eat almost anything on the list anyway.
Preferences also shift. A shrub ignored for years can suddenly be stripped because the local deer or squirrel population has grown and competition for food is fiercer, or because a group is moving through, or because a curious animal tasted something new and happened to like it. Gardeners report exactly this: two lantanas planted the same week, one untouched and one eaten to the stems, or a viburnum and euonymus that were safe for over a year and then were not.
So use the lists to weight your choices, not to plan a defense. If a plant genuinely matters to you, put a barrier around it.
What actually keeps rabbits out?
A fence, and a fairly modest one. Chicken wire about two feet high, buried roughly six inches deep so they cannot dig under it, with mesh small enough that a rabbit cannot squeeze through, will hold a flower bed. Put it up early, well before the rabbits have discovered there is something worth eating inside. For individual plants, a cylinder of hardware cloth around each one does the same job.
Repellents are the second tier. Commercial repellent sprays work for some gardeners, provided they are applied and reapplied exactly as the label directs; effectiveness drops off with rain, heavy dew, and watering, so reapplication is not optional. Scare tactics such as buried bottles that whistle in the wind, or the presence of a dog or cat that patrols the yard, help some gardens. Rotating methods works better than relying on one. None of it is a guarantee. The fence is.
For plants rabbits tend to leave alone, extension programs publish regional lists, and the perennials that recur on them include monkshood, yarrow, aster, wormwood, bellflower, snakeroot, astilbe, wild indigo, foxglove, autumn crocus, leopard's bane, daylily, hosta, meadowsweet, cranesbill geranium, red hot poker, epimedium, iris, yucca, narcissus, lamb's ear, oriental poppy, globeflower, sedum, bergenia, meadow sage, and pearly everlasting. Read that as a starting point. Rabbits take most of their water from what they eat, so they favor the most succulent foliage in the garden, and local populations develop their own habits that no list will predict.
Deer stripped my shrubs over the winter. Will they recover?
Usually, though slowly. Severe defoliation is a serious setback because replacing a full canopy of leaves costs the plant an enormous amount of stored energy. Hollies illustrate the pattern well: different varieties respond differently, younger wood regenerates faster than old growth, and well-established plants bounce back faster than recently planted ones. As long as branches are pushing new growth, the shrub should fill back in and regain its shape over a season or two.
Prune conservatively while it recovers. Remove dead wood whenever you find it, nip off the occasional branch tip that shoots out of line, and take a light shearing if the shape demands it, remembering that branches get bushier wherever you cut. After damage this severe, though, there is a good argument for leaving extra growth in place through the season so it can feed the plant, and doing your real corrective pruning early the following spring.
Support recovery with steady water through the growing season, an annual application of compost, and a soil test to confirm the pH is still in the acid range hollies want. An anti-desiccant spray applied per its label can reduce winter moisture loss on the foliage that remains.
Then deal with the deer, because none of the above matters if they come back. Repellent sprays and various home remedies help some gardeners some of the time. Under heavy browse pressure the only thing that reliably works is a physical barrier: a proper deer fence, which needs to be tall, on the order of eight feet, or individual cages around the plants you care about.
How do I keep squirrels from digging up my bulbs?
Physical exclusion again, and it does not have to be ugly. Lay loose plastic mesh over a flower bed at planting time: the plants grow up through it while squirrels cannot dig. Over a spring bulb bed, use fine plastic mesh secured along the edges with bricks, stones, or lumber, then lift it gently once the shoots are up.
Motion-activated sprinklers startle squirrels and are worth trying in a problem area. Motion-activated lighting is useless, since tree squirrels are active in daylight, not at night. Metal collars around tree trunks, plus pruning back the limbs that give access from elsewhere, stop them climbing particular trees.
For bird feeders, use a proper baffle on the pole. Do not grease the pole with petroleum jelly and do not use sticky barriers: both foul the fur of squirrels and the feathers of birds, which can be fatal for a bird that cannot preen it off, and the practice is no longer considered acceptable.
Some gardeners scatter ground hot pepper in beds and pots, on the theory that capsaicin makes digging unpleasant. It sometimes helps, it washes away with the first rain, and it can irritate the eyes and airways of people and pets, so keep it away from where children play and wash your hands after handling it. Commercial capsaicin repellents come with label directions that tell you where they may be used.
Plants squirrels generally leave alone include ornamental onions such as Allium unifolium, elephant ear, Amaryllis belladonna, Anemone blanda, Arum italicum, astilbe, begonias, caladium, trumpet vine, canna, clematis, lily of the valley, crocosmia, dahlia, bleeding heart, freesia, and gladiolus. Crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis) has a strong smell that squirrels and chipmunks are said to dislike, and planting it among vulnerable bulbs is a pleasant thing to try even if the effect is inconsistent.
It is also worth asking how much damage you actually have. Plenty of gardeners live with squirrels for years and lose a few bulbs once. If the feeder is the only real battleground, a baffle ends the war.
A squirrel is eating my ant bait. Is it going to die?
Almost certainly not. Most household ant baits are based on boric acid, and the amount that kills an ant is trivial for an animal the size of a squirrel, which would have to eat a great many baits to be affected. Dose is what makes a poison.
That said, treat the label warning as real. Use enclosed bait stations rather than open bait, place them where children, pets, and wildlife cannot reach them, and if a pet does eat one, call your veterinarian or a pet poison line rather than waiting to see what happens.
What should I do about gophers?
Trap them. Trapping is labor-intensive and it is by far the most effective method available to a home gardener, with scissor-type traps the best of the lot.
The trick is finding the main run. Starting at a fresh mound, probe the soil with a sharp stick and work outward. Side tunnels dead-end, since they are used for sleeping, waste, and escape; the main run is the tunnel that keeps going without ending and without a mound above it. Set your trap in that main run and block outside light from the opening. Expect to catch several animals in the same place over days or weeks, and when activity shifts to another part of the yard, probe there and move the trap.
Do not use strychnine bait. Old "gopher pill" products containing it are genuinely dangerous, their age makes their condition unknowable, and a poisoned animal can in turn poison whatever eats it. Take anything like that to a household hazardous waste collection site and let them dispose of it, and keep it out of a vegetable garden entirely. Sonic and vibrating devices have a poor record and are not worth the money.
Raised beds are easier than open ground. Gophers spend nearly all their lives underground and would find it very unusual to climb the side of a raised bed, so hardware cloth or steel mesh across the base is enough; there is no need to line the outside walls with anything. Gophers are not usually targeting your plants specifically, incidentally. They chew through whatever roots lie in the path of a tunnel, and the reason they chose your garden is that the soil is soft, rich, and full of grubs, which is a backhanded compliment to your soil building.
How do I get rid of the smell after a dead animal under the porch?
Tomato juice and air freshener will not do it, as you have discovered. Three approaches have a track record on the ground where a skunk, possum, or raccoon has decomposed.
Lime is the fastest. Emptying a full bag of it over the spot smothers the odor for most people. It is caustic, so wear gloves and eye protection, keep pets and children off the area while you work, and be aware that it will raise the soil pH substantially, which matters if you plan to plant there.
Baking soda takes longer but is gentler. Pour several boxes over the spot, leave it a few days, scoop it out, and repeat, expecting to go through the cycle five to seven times before the smell is truly gone.
An enzyme-based odor eliminator of the sort sold with laundry products is the third option, used generously rather than sparingly, saturating the ground rather than misting it.
For the removal itself, wear gloves and a mask, bag the remains and the contaminated soil, and wash thoroughly afterward, since carcasses carry parasites and disease. If an animal dies somewhere inaccessible, or if you would rather not handle it, animal control or a wildlife removal service will.
Neighborhood cats are using my beds as a litter box
Make the ground unpleasant to dig. Ornamental pebbles laid over the soil work if they are angular rather than smooth and round, since smooth stones make an excellent cat bed, and they need to be bedded firmly into the soil or mulch so they cannot be pushed aside. Small-gauge chicken wire laid down and covered with a thin layer of soil or mulch does the same thing to soft paws, and incidentally suppresses some weeds.
Scent plantings are worth a try. Fritillaria, ornamental garlic, and onion bulbs put out a smell most animals dislike, rodents included, and unlike a spray they do not wash off. Fencing works here as it does everywhere else.
Two things to skip. Lime is often recommended for neutralizing cat urine and there is no good evidence it does anything; it also changes your soil chemistry and is caustic to handle. Mothballs are not a garden product, and scattering them outdoors as an animal repellent is both ineffective and contrary to the label, which is to say illegal. Any repellent you do use, commercial or otherwise, degrades with moisture and time and must be renewed after every rain, heavy dew, or run of the sprinkler.
The honest bottom line is that these are someone else's pets and you cannot train them, so you are left outwitting them.
Javelina and quail in a desert garden
Javelina will root through and feed on very nearly anything, so a fence is the first recommendation rather than the last. Their favorites are cactus, succulents, bulbs and tubers, and anything that drops fruit or nuts, and they will eat most tender new plantings and dig up even the plants they have no intention of eating.
Wildlife agencies and extension programs in the Southwest list these as among the least attractive to javelina: basil, alyssum, chile pepper, butterfly bush, chrysanthemum, carnation, cottonwood, cosmos, daffodil, cucumber, daylily, dahlia, Easter lily, deerbrush, fir, eggplant, gladiolus, geranium, hens and chicks, globe amaranth, ice plant, hibiscus, ivy, iris, larkspur, juniper, manzanita, lilac, marigold, maple, oak, mountain mahogany, pansy, pampas grass, petunia, peony, portulaca, pine, rose, red hot poker, sage, rosemary, shrub live oak, santolina, skunkbush, silktassel, spruce, snapdragon, vinca, sweet William, viola, and zinnia. Two cautions on that list: English ivy and pampas grass are invasive in parts of the West, so check your local status before planting either.
Rabbits in the same gardens will eat practically everything except cactus, and cylinders of hardware cloth over individual plants are the only dependable answer.
Quail are a different and briefer problem. They are not really eating your plants so much as working freshly turned soil for seeds and insects, which uproots seedlings as a side effect. Cover newly set annuals and perennials with a protective barrier until the surface of the bed crusts over, and that is usually all it takes.
There is a snake in my garden
If it is a garter snake, leave it alone. Garter snakes are beneficial residents that eat beetles, slugs, snails, and similar pests, and they do not eat chipmunks. They are also timid: they clear out when you walk past, and a lawn mower starting up will empty a whole area of them.
Snake repellent products are widely sold and the evidence that any of them work is poor, so do not spend much on the idea, and do not scatter mothballs, which are not labeled for that use. What genuinely reduces snake numbers is removing what attracts them: brush piles, tall grass, rock piles, and a rodent population.
Identification matters before you act. If there is any possibility a snake is venomous, do not attempt to catch or kill it, since most snakebites happen during exactly that attempt. Keep people and pets back, give it time to leave on its own, and if it will not, call animal control or a licensed wildlife removal service.
