Living Deer Fence Plant Options

Planting a living fence to keep humans/deer out and to survive the deer (thorns, bad tasting, heck even mildly poisonous). As well it would be nice if the fence could slow down escaping goats. I live on a island zone 7-8 pacific northwest with no large predators and lots of deer. Thinking of planting a combination of thorny honey locust, black lucust, hawthorne, osage orange, sea buckthorn, russian olive, blackberry, raspberry, salmonberry, siberian pea shrub, try to grow honey pod mesquite in one spot, along with a under planting of stinging nettle, comfry, yarrow other supporting herbaceous plants. Does anyone know of other plants that could be used or if any of the plants I listed won't work ? Willow and hazelnut won't work because the deer love it to much.

Hi Eleanor,

here on the sunshine coast the deer nest amongst the blackberry brambles... they're not intentionally laid in a fence pattern though.  

This thread may be of interest to you

https://permies.com/forums/posts/preList/63754/613027

I like the list. I think peashrub will get browsed like crazy, as will locusts, mine sure do. I would consider trifoliate orange as well. That stuff is wicked.

Russian olives here on my place. I've ate them since late September. And made jelly, juice, cider with cinnamon and honey, squeezed lemon and honey into russian olives juiced for lemonade gave to all..i have no more scars, I don't get cold nor flu and wounds heal so quickly from thorns while harvesting now that I feel immune to alot. No more Omeprazole for acid reflux immediate relief as I ate from my trees while picking and sinus relief from being a sniffly nose. I accumulatively built these up in my system over a two month time. Eating mass amounts of russian olives September bitter one to the sweet ones after frost hit the olives a few times. As soon as sun dried the frost..I pick and eat and make juice. Better than apple cider by far. But was to busy to notice the hair grows back in bald spots, hemroids gone, scars healing from inside out and even scars like ear piercing child birth tisues, etc have all healed as well as keloids on my foot. I had huge scars on my finger from tablesaw accident. Completely gone. I have to stretch my finger out to see fine white line where scar use to be. Bones are good not. No cracking and popping. Me visions coming back as I'd burnt eyes while burning branches during tree pruning when I bought this place. This tree gave me healing and couldn't have come from anyone but God himself. I'm not a Bible thumper nor a tree hugger, but this must be why the good Lord has made these russian olive trees plentiful..he was pushing them at us so we would take notice. Lol and biblical stuff came up when I'd look up what was happening as I healed. Amazing.Glory be to God. I've been actually growing new layers of skin so fast my freckles are fading away now for goodness sakes

you might consider adding some Ceanothus, also known as mountain lilacs. There are many which are native to the west coast. this is one of the preferred native food plants that the deer love.

i realize you seem to be going for the opposite effect, of anything the deer do not like, but consider that the outside of the fence could be something of a trap crop meant to satisfy the deer and not have them need to go further onto the land.

for the opposite effect, deer wont eat my artichokes, sage or lavender plants, actually most strong smelling herbs like thyme and oregano are also not attractive to deer.

Thank you for all good info:)
I got 1 pound Persian Honey Locust (Gleditsia Caspia) seed it supposed to have 6 inch thorns with more thrones coming off them. I was thinking I would shock plant the honey locust seeds out and maybe not give the seedlings any deer protection so the consent nibbling would encourage more thorns or would that just kill  all the plants ?

The honey Locust would grow in a zig zag along the property line, the tops laid down and vertical shoots weaved n fused together in 2 inch squares. In the elbows of the zig zag would be taller canopy trees. Along the ground up to 4 ft or so willl be reinforced with sea buckthorn and russian olive. Native wild blackberry (semi up right), maybe Marionberry (vine like) native wild rose growing in and around other plants. Plus a sprinkleing of the other plants that I mentioned. In the end the fence (more hedge) will be about 10 ft deep. Instead of finding a plant for every function I do the lazy thing by planting alot different plants, mainly shrubs and herbaceous plants.

Edit
I keep coming back to Honey Locust cause it makes good firewood, edible pods for live stock and humans, tree 'hay' for goats also chickens/geese, moderate rot resistance small timber, may or may not fix nitrogen. Osage orange has really rot resistant wood, leaves n such are not as tasty to live stock, fruit inedible, doesn't provide nitrogen, good firewood tho, but overall less uses.

I'm dealing with a similar issue on my property. I'm growing approximately 5 foot wide hedgerows focusing on native plants but not fully limited to only natives. After the first year I quickly discovered that I needed to put up a temporary fence to give the plants time to grow. For this I installed t-posts along the front and back of the hedgerows. Between these t-posts I strung electrical wire just as a physical barrier but not charged. The electrical wire is really cheap and easy to setup. The wires were strung about 6 inches apart from the bottom to the top of the t-posts. The end result is that I have two parallel fences running along the hedgerows. So far the deer have been blocked where ever I have this setup - it is fairly cheap and easy to do though it does not look great but it is just meant to be a temp fence and luckily living in a semi-rural area my neighbors don't seem to mind.

I'm also planting a bunch of native roses - Nootka rose - along the side of the hedgerows that will face the deer. These roses like to spread and are very resilient plus deer don't really mess with them. They also get about 6 foot high at max. Behind the roses are my existing larger shrubs and a few small trees. The idea is that the roses fill in the lower portions of the hedgerow and also block the deer from easily reaching the larger shrubs - serviceberries, elderberries, red-flowering currants, mock oranges and a couple others. I'm also placing herbaceous plants around the woody plants to fill everything in. Mostly lupin, strawberries and Californian poppies.

Once the hedgerow is fully established I will take out the temp fences leaving just the hedgerows. My goal is not to stop the browse but make it not easy for the deer. I want them to come up to the hedgerow and just walk along it only browsing on the things they can easily reach. Since this hedgerow is also along a shared dirt road I'm hoping the deer will do my pruning for me so I don't have to cut the branches of the shrubs back from the road. If I can keep the browse to a level the plants can handle then the deer will switch from being a problem to being part of the solution by doing my work for me by keeping the shrubs out of the road.

I have been watching deer as they travel around my property and my neighbors and I noticed they like to just slowly walk and browse. Here at least they don't tend to just stop in one place for too long. If you can just keep them moving and "guide" them around the areas you don't want them to go without running them into a dead-end you might be able to minimize their browsing and minimize their attempts to bust through. If they can keep moving and find food along a fairly easy route they will likely skip the harder route.