Wildlife experts never use the term 'deer-proof.' They know white-tailed deer will eat almost any kind of plant if they're hungry enough and, even if well fed, will sample plants they're not supposed to like. This year, I finally decided that the only way to continue to enjoy my garden would be to make it deer-proof. We enjoyed seeing fawns, too, but we didn't realize then what this meant in terms of our future gardening efforts: The herd was growing, and the deer would eat whatever they found attractive. They wandered through our yard and browsed and rested in the nearby woods. We liked to watch them, and sometimes the deer watched us with their own style of curiosity. A few years ago, my husband and I began to see deer around.

Our rural street is surrounded by acres of woods. With little new growth in the woods for them to eat, the hungry deer had been coming to my garden to gobble up juicy young plants.

In March, I found every daylily sprout clipped and every emerging tulip munched to the ground. Losing my impatiens was disappointing, but it didn't prepare me for what came next. I had fallen for a pretty plant and brought it home, never stopping to wonder if our neighbors, a small herd of white-tailed deer, might appreciate it, too. I was experiencing double impatience with myself. Then one morning I discovered every one of its dozen flower stalks was gone, nipped off, presumably consumed. I'm not a great gardener, so it was something of a miracle to have such a gorgeous plant not only surviving, but thriving.

It was a double impatiens, which develops a bouquet of dark green leaves and white, rose-like flowers. Last summer, I went out each day to visit a plant in a garden near our front door.

Purple coneflower deer resistant