As with so many of you who have deer in your neighbourhood, my yard is a smorgasbord for those beautiful creatures, and I don’t care one bit.
Summer’s not a problem because I don’t have a veggie garden, and they don’t seem to crave anything I have in the garden beds around the house; they just love all the wild summer green snacks available so all else is relatively safe.
Not so in winter. About 30 years ago I got all hyped up about creating a forest in my yard, so I began by planting 25 young trees about five feet high. Four of them remain today. The other 21 lasted until about the middle of the first winter, when the hungry nibblers chewed the bark off them.
Toast.
Not sure how I saved the remaining four; I think I remember putting knuckle lawn fencing around a few that hadn’t been dined on yet, and somehow just managed to keep them going.
It’s a good thing deer don’t eat meat, or I’d likely be gone too.
I also planted seven or so young lilac bushes I’d purchased from a roadside stand. They were in the five-foot-or-so range as well, and today, there is no evidence whatsoever that they ever existed. I did keep a few of them limping along for a few summers, but eventually the deer just won. Ah well, we moved into their territory, and they have to eat too, so good on them.
However, I think I may finally have them licked.
Last summer, I saw an ad for a freebie, a big lilac root ball a young couple in Charleswood had initially cut down to about eight inches or so, then worked very hard to dig out the root in one big ball preserving as much of the root system as possible.
All I had to do was pick it up from the end of their driveway. We dragged it up onto my trailer, it was extremely heavy, and I brought it home. It must have been one huge lilac bush.
It sat by my driveway for a couple of weeks. I kept watering it, and in late fall, with the help of a guy’s backhoe, we planted it. I watered it regularly until freeze-up, and guess what? Those roots have shoots coming out of them like crazy. A successful transplant, and this time, the deer, which graze in my yard every day, are not going to get to chow this down.
First step, spray the stumpy part of the bush with a repellant, and if that doesn’t do the job, I still have some of that old knuckle lawn fence to wall them out with.
This has encouraged me to become Mr. Transplant. I just didn’t know you could successfully dig up a bush that had been as big as this one was and have it survive and thrive. The key seems to be having enough of the root ball, earth included, then water the heck out of it once you’ve re-homed it.
So if you have a big beautiful lilac bush that you love but no longer works in its present location, don’t have it removed and discarded — simply have it moved to a different part of your yard.
I’m thinking this one didn’t even have to be cut back, just dug up and moved as is.
I’ll be hunting the countryside for others to move, with permission of course.
A caragana hedge along the property line would be nice too. There are plenty of old farm sites, house gone, with healthy caragana hedges. Again, with permission, maybe I can find a couple of rows of those to bring home. Rent a backhoe, and look out backroads, here I come.
I do wish I’d persevered with the plantings decades ago. I would have a forest by now. Time to catch up.
Cheers!
lmustard1948@gmail.com
