Ants are good for the garden, and unless they are getting into the house it would be best to leave them alone. I would be surprised if boiling water will do much. It will cool quickly once it hits the soil and ants are not bothered too much by water in their nest. The ant poison they sell is made from borax. Instead of buying this rediculously expensive product, just get some borax from a grocery store or harware store - it is used for cleaning. Mix it 1/2 - 1/2 with sugar. The ants will eat the sugar and borax at the same time and die. Before that happens they will take some back to the queen.

I agree with Flora--planting like this may do a little bit, but won't completely solve the problem. As she stated, chives are super easy to grow, but they do grow in clumps. It would take a lot to make an actual 'fence'. Garlic chives are also nice, with pretty flowers, though they'll take longer to mature. (they're pretty puny the first year) Both chives can spread if you don't cut the flowers to prevent seeding. Basil you might want to do more research on--I seem to remember that it might be a help to roses in other ways, but as I don't grow roses, didn't pay much attention to that when I read it. Catnip grows easily, but you will attract every cat in the neighborhood to your garden, and it can spread. Catmint doesn't attract the cats as much, but does become a nuisance as far as spreading. Garlic and onions are relatively easy, but may not have much effect, especially in raised beds. I'm a city girl, so don't have much problem with bunnies and deer (do have to worry about rats eating my seedlings). I do remember something I read saying she plants a ring of parsley around some beds--the bunnies just stay on the edges and eat that and leave the inner stuff alone. Aphids will be a problem, and if you want to stick organic, the best way to combat them is your garden hose. A good spray will knock most of them off, and if you keep it up, they're weak little critters and many will die before climbing back up. A spray bottle of a dishsoap solution will help kill eggs organically--make sure you're spraying the bottoms of leaves. Neem may be an option too. Maybe check out the rose forum for other suggestions? The herbs that have been mentioned here are all easy to grow. Most like average soil, well draining (which your raised beds would be). Very little fertilizer is needed for in-ground herbs, if any as long as the soil was amended with compost, etc. They all like to be kept more moist (moist but not sitting in water) unlike some of the Mediterranean arid types--if you look at thyme, oregano, rosemary--you'll have to do more research to learn their water needs. Basil is annual, easy to grow from seed or buy transplants, but you'll plant it each year. Chives are perennial and would come back after winter each year.

I bet your Ant is really ANTS, Digit! I don't know about carpenter ants, but I have tiny black ants in my yard that "don't exist" from mid-summer thru fall, but every spring they swarm out of "somewhere," and there are millions of them "piled up" on the grass or soil! I'll look out the window and see what looks like a little "pile" of potting soil that somehow was accidentally dumped on the grass, and when I go out to explore the situation I discover it's a writhing "clump" of ants! And they ARE tiny, so there really are MILLIONS of them. They have so undermined the soil under my sidewalk where it meets my little front porch that the sidewalk is now at least a couple inches lower than it originally was, and it's now a BIG step to get up onto the porch! From what I can figure out, it looks to me like they "thrived" for years under---wait for it---the landscape fabric and rock mulch the previous owners had put in! When I was removing all that "STUFF" I found huge nests of them, at least I found the hundreds of tunnels that went down into the, apparently, HUGE cities! They had even eaten huge holes in the (nasty!) landscape fabric! And that stuff is virtually indestructible! When I first found them I thought: No big problem! Funny me!!! At first I just took household insect spray and saturated the tunnels and soil around them. They stood there, stuck their tongues out at me, and laughed at me! After a couple years I discovered that dumping (gallons!) of ammonia down the tunnels helped--kinda! Except for the time I poured it around some HOT stepping stones when I killed the grass near the stones, it seemed to actually help the grass and plants, so I kept pouring--but there were ALWAYS more ants! A few years ago I started using Bug-B-Gon Max on the, also large, omnipresent population of earwigs I've had ever since moving in here. For a couple years they were eating more of my veggies than I was! Since that stuff was working for the earwigs I started sprinkling it in, on, and around the ants and tunnels whenever I found them, and that, finally, seems to be really helping! I'll know more for sure in about a month when they should start Erupting again! I'm not expecting them to be GONE this year, but I do expect them to be noticeably "diminished!" Hoping in a couple years I'll be able to mostly rid my yard of them! If I were you I'd do some Serious Watching this spring, so if they really are there--in a huge city somewhere far down in the underworld--you'll find them as soon as possible and be able to start to "do something" about them. The longer they're there, the worse they'll be. I have NO doubt about that! Good luck, Skybird P.S. HI, BugDoc! Welcome to RMG! Nice to see somebody around here who might know something about "bugs!" If you have time, go to the Who's Here in 2014 thread and introduce yourself. We're glad you found us!

Mizan, yes it does ... lol. And thank you for your tip! Were the squirrels gnawing the bark? Whatever the problem, that's an ingenious solution and easier than installing a metal collar which I've seen recommended to keep squirrels out of mature pecan trees. NMM, Linda M started using the dryer sheets on a whim remembering that sticking a couple in your back pocket had been recommended to keep mosquitoes away when outside. I've tried that and it works. She looked further into the subject on line this morning and sent a couple of LINKS. The second links refers to research showing why some brands work better than others depending what it is in dryer sheets that have the repellent qualities. Linda says the inexpensive HEB brand is what she's using and finds to be working. I hope it works for you. Let us know.