Due to some lingering health issues, I have not maintained our flowers and shrubs over the summer months the way I normally do. I have spent considerable time in the yard this past week trying to catch up, and the yard looks like someone took a weed eater to all the roses, bulbs and various other plants.

The weed eater in this case happened to be whitetail deer. Whitetail deer are just as much at home eating wild plants in the woods as they are eating the roses in your flower garden.

It is truly amazing how a deer’s single walk through your yard can result in so much damage. It can become frustrating and expensive for homeowners who enjoy flower and vegetable gardening.

A couple of does and their twin fawns set up housekeeping in our neighborhood back during the summer months and they have seen no reason to leave. They enjoy the safety from hunters and the fine dining in our yard. We walk out the door at any time of the day and there they are just waiting for a bite to eat.

When my wife Wanda and I moved to our current home on Lake Sinclair several years ago, we immediately set about planting our new yard with a variety of flowers and plants. We walked into our newly planted yard one morning to find unbelievable destruction.

In a single night, the deer had destroyed about half our flowers and scrubs. The deer ate large blooming roses all the way down to the ground and completely pulled up other freshly planted flowers. To say the least, it was heartbreaking to have our time and money go out the window so quickly.

Once the deer find your yard full of delicious plants, they will return time after time and without some type of prevention, the deer will totally destroy your yard. Looking for prevention, I began a search that lasted more than a year.

I was attempting to find some way to control the deer or at least stop them from eating our flowers. My search took me to several books, gardening stores and websites in search of remedies.

I tried about everything including human hair, noise makers, soap, blood meal, several commercial sprays and even a homemade recipe for a repellant that I could spray on the plants. There are several recipes floating around and most include the use of eggs.

The one recipe I tried included cayenne pepper, eggs and assorted other ingredients. Some of those things I tried did work but only for a couple days at best. The deer would quickly return to their browsing activity.

I reached the point where I thought I only had two options left and neither of those were good options. I could simply forget having flowers and scrubs or place a deer stand in my yard and sit there each night with a loaded rifle. The first option was not acceptable and the second option was certain to run afoul of the law.

I continued my search on the Internet and came across a product called Liquid Fence (www.liquidfence.com). Shortly after reading about that product on the Internet, I stopped by a local landscape business to buy some pine straw and saw the product in the store.

I asked the store owner if they had any reports from local homeowners who might have used Liquid Fence. Seems that the product was fairly new to the area but the owner had received some positive feedback about the product’s effectiveness. I was out of other options and decided to try the product.

That was the best decision I could possibly have made. The product is absolutely amazing. Liquid Fence is a little on the expensive side, but if want to have flowers and scrubs in an area where deer are present, it is a great investment. Used correctly Liquid Fence will safely stop deer from browsing in your yard.

The spray only has to be applied to flowers and plants that deer like once every five weeks. Deer are very selective about what they eat. The key is determining which plants the deer like from those that they dislike. I simply began that determination by just looking at my own yard. I could readily see what the deer had eaten and what flowers and plants the deer had avoided.

Unfortunately you cannot depend on special tags that are applied at nurseries that indicate if the plant or flower is deer safe. When they made up those tags, I think they forgot to consult with the deer. However there are certain plants and flowers that deer love and if you intend to have them in your yard and you have deer in the vicinity, you will have to have some type of deer control.

For those homeowners who may wish for a more lethal way to control the deer, you might as well forget that idea. For the homeowner struggling to have a flower or vegetable garden, you are limited to non-lethal means of control. I am again actively spraying Liquid Fence just to protect what is left of our flowers and the deer have taken notice. See you next week.

Outdoor columnist Bobby Peoples can be reached via email at brpeoples@windstream.net.