I am interested in scilla, winter aconite, snowdrops, crocus tommasinianus, iris reticulata cultivers, and hyacinths. I have enough daffodils and can't plant tulips because of deer. Take a look at my 'have' list which is current. I will be adding more to the list as plants break dormancy. Thanks for looking.

Deer herds will have different preferences by regions, depending upon availability of other foods. I've found these flowers to work well in my deer resistant garden (no fencing, no repellents in use). SL Magazine was here this summer and has a copy of this list that they are going to use in an upcoming issue in 2010 that features my deer resistant garden. I am listing only those plants that I've personally grown in my garden where 20+ deer wander through at least once a day. I'm sure that I've forgotten a few plants, but these are the best. Top Flowering Deer Resistant Perennials: Agastache 'Salmon & Pink' 'Blue Fortune' 'Purple Haze' 'Purple Pygmy' 'Heather Queen' Echinacea 'Ruby Star' 'White Swan' 'Sundown' (I think that's it -- orange) Monarda 'Raspberry Wine' 'Jacob Cline' 'Blue Stocking' Nepeta 'Walkers Low' and 'Six Hills Giant' Salvia guarantica 'Black & Blue' ulignosa (bog sage) greggii 'Dark Dancer', 'Navajo Bright Red', 'Diane', 'Texas Wedding', 'Cherry Queen' nemorosa 'Marcus', 'Caradonna' Other good deer resistant flowering perennials heliotropium amplexicaule 'Azure Skies' gaillardia ageratum 'Wayside' baptisia coreopsis 'Creme Brulee' and verticillata 'Zagreb/ amsonia hubrichtii verbena 'Homestead Purple' verbena bonariensis crocosmia 'Lucifer' delosperma cooperii stachys hummelo anemone 'Margarette', 'Prince Henry' rudbeckia 'Goldsturm' iris ensata (there may be some bloom picking. I grow many of these and lost only 3 blooms that I noticed) Top Flowering Deer Resistant Shrubs & Trees Crape Myrtle 'Tuscarora', 'Muskogee', 'White Chocolate' Buddleia 'Pink Delight', 'Royal Red', 'Adonis Blue', 'Honeycomb', 'Black Knight' (and another one that is lavender/orange eye) Vitex 'Shoal Creek' Spirea 'Neon Flash' for blooms and a few other varieties for the foliage Lantana (multiple varieties; some bloom nibbles may occur in late fall) osmanthus fragrans magnolia - Sweet Bay Magnolia and Southern (must protect trunk from antler rubbing, but they don't eat these) Winter Daphne Gardenia 'August Beauty' I've just added the Proven Winners 'Blue Satin' Rose of Sharon to try. It is listed as deer resistant Flowering Deer Resistant Vines Carolina Jasmine Confederate Jasmine Flowering Deer Resistant Annuals and Bulbs daffodils Spanish bluebells allium 'Purple Sensation' Dutch iris larkspur snapdragons petunias (I grow only the deep purple that are very fragrant. Not Wave.) zinnias (Benary's Giant tested) marigolds angelonia cosmos Deer Resistant Foliage Plants (shrubs, trees, herbs and perennials) canna 'tropicana rose' stachys 'Helen von Stein' colocasia esculenta white butterfly ginger lysmachia nummularia Aurea lavender (Spanish and 'Munstead') rosemary oregano (culinary officinalis and ornamental gold) sages (culinary officinalis, purple, gold leaf, pineapple) thyme (rose, lemon, culinary) chives basil (Thai, sweet, spicy, purple) miscanthus 'Cosmopolitan', 'Little Zebra' carex (multiple varieties) pink muhly pampas grass chamaecyparis pisifera wax myrtle carex holly oakleaf holly osmanthus 'Goshiki' cotinus - purple smokebush (I grow it for the foliage, not the bloom) clumping bamboo (fargesii?) weeping willow, curly willow river birch cryptomeria (Black Dragon and the large trees that are probably one of the Tsugi?) deodar cedar Cameron Here is a link that might be useful: my gardening blog (select deer resistant topic)

Ack! Deer. The bane of my existance.(as a gardener anyway) We live right in the middle of a major deer run..we have deer all year round, usually in groups of 5 or so, but sometimes up to 30. They browse EVERYTHING. All the deer resistant plants? They either take bites of them as well, or else they just sharpen their horns, chew on the bark, etc. For any of my new-ish shade trees, they all have chicken wire, about 3 1/2-4 ft tall staked around the tree. Once the tree gets larger, I'll probably just put a wrap of wire around the trees trunk to prevent the deer from chewing off the bark or rubbing their horns on the trunk, and enlarge it when I need to. For my newly planted shelterbelt trees, I use a deer repellant called "Scout"...I have found it works fairly well, and lasts for a least a season(I apply in spring and fall). It is quite thick so I have to paint it on. I didn't want an unsightly deer fence either, but I finally caved and we are building a 8 ft tall large enclosure around our orchard and veggie garden. They are so relentless, it is either do that or quite replacing the trees. I also put a plastic netting type fence around the perennial bed that is right up by the house, but only in the winter. I have found that even though the fence is only 5 1/2 feet or so, it is enough of a deterrant for the deer browsing...they never try to jump in(that close to the house). It is unsightly through the winter, but very effective. I take it down in spring and try to keep an eye out for the deer. When I see them I shoot at them with a pellet gun...I probably never hit them(and it wouldn't hurt much if it did) but the "Pop!" sound REALLY makes them run. They must think hunting season has returned!(we live on a farm, by the way)

Picasa is FREE! That was one of the conditions for the photo hosting site when I was looking for one and trying to figure out how to do it! Once you figure it out it's incredibly easy, and if you decide to install it I'll help you figure out anything that doesn't make sense to you! There are "two parts" to Picasa! Picasa is software that lets you organize and edit your pictures. It doesn't actually "store" your pics, every time you start it it goes thru all the files on your computer and "finds" them all and puts them in whatever order/folders you put them into! It only takes a few seconds for it to load! All my pictures on my computer are in sub-folders in a picture folder, but it also "finds" pics anywhere else, like on the desktop. After you have it installed you can go to a "folder manager" and block it from scanning any files you don't want it to scan every time it starts! The folder manager lists all the files it's scanning, and you just "x" the ones you don't want it scanning. The second part is Picasa WebAlbums, which is where you put the pics to get the links you need to post them online. WebAlbums does actually store the pics you put in it, so you can access them from anywhere as long as you can get online. You get some free storage space in WebAlbums, I think it's 5 GB, but if you want/need more than that you need to pay for it. I sorta got in on the ground floor and I pay $5 a year for more space than I'll ever use, but it's higher now, but still quite reasonable. If you don't do videos, 5 GB really is a surprising amount of space! I just checked my storage and I'm using 1.33 GB of my (paid) up to 36 GB! I have 77 albums in WebAlbums now, and several thousand pics! In the past I've tried to explain this to people in words, and I was sitting here earlier trying to think of a better way to do it--to SHOW you how it's done, and it dawned on me that I could take screenshots of some of it to help explain it! Here goes! I recommend you right click on these pics and open them in a separate window so you can keep this thread visible at the same time! Also, I've put captions on the screenshots that you won't be able to see/read unless you do click on the pics! The first one is a pic of the basic Picasa window showing my list of folders down the left side and the first few pics in one of my folders on the right. This is where they wind up when you hook up your camera to the computer (or put your card in the computer) to import the pics into the computer. I don't have a screenshot of it 'cause it's basically just a blank window if I don't have a card in the computer to import pics from, but this Picasa window goes to the Import window and all the pics "appear." Once they appear you decide if you want to import all of them or just some of them--ones you imported earlier are automatically excluded. When you decide which ones you want to import and click import they all go into a folder like the folders you see in the left column in this screenshot! [I have a Mac so if you have a PC the desktop background is going to look very different! Had two PC's and LOVE my Mac!] This one shows what happens when you double click on an individual pic, and this is where you do any editing and captioning you may want to do. The editing functions are the little boxes in the left column. If you want to see it more clearly, click on the pic and then click on the little magnifying glass on top and wait for it to come up. You can make it bigger yet by clicking on the + on the top left corner of the magnified view! This one is the same as the last one but it shows some more of the editing possibilities on the left side. Read the caption for more! This shows the main Picasa WebAlbums screen with my albums. When I "open" the albums I usually do it in a separate window so I can open several of them side by side if I'm looking for something--usually a pic of a particular plant/flower! This is what an individual album looks like. The links for posting an entire album on RMG/online are on the right side. (I post individual pics, have never posted a whole album online!) See the caption, and see the next pic! This is what happens when you click on a pic in an album. and on the right side is where you get the links to post the individual pic online! See the caption, and the next pic! This is the same pic in that album, but in this one, on the right side I've clicked on the "Link to this photo" and it drops down so you can decide what size you want to post and then copy the link. The pics I'm posting here are "medium!" Again, see the caption for more! This is a screenshot of what happens when you click on the magnifying glass up on top! To go back to the "regular" view you just click anywhere off the edge of the magnified view. More in the caption! That's all I was gonna post, but then it dawned on me you might want to know how you get the pics from Picasa into WebAlbums, so one more screenshot! This one goes back to the Picasa screen. I've "selected" the nine screenshots from the "folder" and they're (very small) in the "tray" in the lower left corner. After they're in the tray you just click on the big green button that says "share," and the little window on the right opens. In the little "Upload to WebAlbums" window you can either pick an existing WebAlbums album to upload them to, or you can click on "new" and create a new WebAlbums album. The you just click the green "Upload" button on the lower right and wait for them to finish uploading. Once you do it the first couple times it really is incredibly easy! I'm Olde! If I can do it, anybody can do it! A couple other things! After I started using Picasa they added "facial recognition" software to it! I hate that! I don't want to "name" my "people" and have them "identified all over the WWW!" I have face recognition disabled, and unless that's something you want I'll walk you thru how to disable it if you want! Picasa is google software, and you need a google account to sign in to use it. If you have a gmail account you're all set to go! Otherwise you'll need to set up a google account. I use gmail, and Picasa defaults to my "first" gmail account which "they" consider to be my primary account--I have several gmail accounts by now! If you decide you want to install it, google picasa download and go to the GOOGLE site to do it so you know you're not getting any "extras" along with the installation--if you know what I mean! There are versions for PCs and for Macs. I'm kind of assuming this will raise questions for you that I haven't answered! Let me know what doesn't make sense! I was SO glad for all the help I got back when I was trying to figure it out! If you want a laugh some day, here's a link to that original thread back in '07 when I was trying to figure out how to post pics and didn't have a CLUE! I was still stuck on trying to figure out which drive I was supposed to shove my camera into to get the pics "into" the computer! (I had one of those awful PCs back then, so this is all very outdated--but it's still pretty funny! And because of some changes Picasa made in what people can see when you link a pic, the Picasa pics I posted back then aren't clickable anymore! Back then if you posted one pic, people had access to the entire album! Now you can decide if you want them to just see the one pic, or the whole album! I'm hungry! Gonna go! Skybird P.S. Almost forgot this! I've read online that iPhoto can "mess" with PIcasa somehow, so if you have a Mac and have ever opened and used iPhoto for anything, disable it first. I tried iPhoto when I first got my Mac and didn't like it AT ALL! Then my hard drive crashed (love my Mac in spite of that!), and when I got the new hard drive I never opened or did anything with iPhoto so it wasn't a problem when I installed Picasa! P.P.S. Another thing! When you edit your pics in Picasa, the "original pics" are "unchanged." The "changes" are stored in the Picasa program, but you can ALWAYS go back to the original if you want to for any reason. Or you can have the original version AND the edited version. As I understand it, other editing sites "change the original" so you can't "get it back" once you've altered it. Not positive about that, but I know for sure in Picasa you always have access to the original! I'm hungry!!! Here is a link that might be useful: 2007 Photo Hosting Sites thread