Learn how to keep your trees safe from wildlife inexpensively and naturally.
In this course you will learn how to…
* Individually protect trees & shrubs from hungry deer. * Consider deer resistance of various fruit & nut trees. * Let go of the need for absolute control & protection. * Evaluate how much deer fencing you really need. * Learn from native trees’ natural deer resistance. * Set physical boundaries between deer and trees. * Decide between exclusions and deterrents. * Avoid losing trees & shrubs to rodents. * Prevent trunk damage from buck rub. * “Converse” with deer via tree leaves. * And much more…
with detailed photos and a reference guide… Plus a bonus module on Natural Deer Resistance!
This Course Includes
Each module guides you through the options you have available for individually protecting trees and shrubs from deer and rodents with extra emphasis on what has worked best for us. We explain the pros and cons of each option and provide detailed guides and instructions for the most effective methods. Protecting trees doesn’t have to be expensive and budgetary concerns are addressed. Many helpful photos illustrate each topic.
Deer Browse
Learn how to protect your tree’s ability to photosynthesize by keeping their leaves safe from hungry deer.
Buck Rub
We share a variety of methods of protecting trees from buck rub before it kills or injures your young trees.
Rodent Gnaw
We cover options for protecting young trees’ and shrubs’ soft and vulnerable bark from rodents.
BONUS! Natural Deer Resistance
Get to know your own trees’ and shrubs’ relative level of natural deer resistance based on their inherent qualities and adjust your protection accordingly. Learn how trees have evolved to protect themselves from deer in the wild.
Meet Your Teacher
Hi, I’m Noel!
I was bit by the permaculture bug over a decade ago and that sent me down a path of forest gardening. Looking to nature and mentors for direction has brought me to embracing diversity of life and gardening more naturally. At our family homestead I enjoy growing a wide range of common and uncommon fruit and nut trees in our orchards and along the forest edge.
Growing trees with minimal protection has given me a wealth of experience learning what works and what doesn’t work in the presence of deer and other wildlife. Embracing this cultural shift of growing trees more naturally brings joy to my heart in the same way that my green friends (aka plants and trees) offer abundant health and unconditional love.
Growing Trees With Deer
Through my passion for gardening with fruit, nut and medicinal trees I found myself planting hundreds of trees & shrubs. For the better part of the last decade, hungry deer and rodents have been a concern with any tree I’ve planted or cared for.
Inspired by permaculture, Masanoba Fukuoka and others, learning to garden more naturally has been a primary theme in my personal journey.
Fencing our entire property from deer was financially, physically and geographically prohibitive so I found myself looking for creative and budget-friendly solutions to protect the trees I grow.
Allowing deer, rabbits and many other species of wildlife safe passage through most of the land our family stewards while still individually protecting our food-bearing trees gives me great joy.
Planting trees in the presence of deer and rodents was initially a challenge because I didn’t know where to start. But after years of research and trial and error it has become second nature.
Most fruit tree and orchard books only give brief mentions to deer protection. While helpful they often don’t go into much detail. Likewise, most deer resistant gardening books mainly talk about inedible ornamental plants but give little mention to fruit and nut trees. So there were a lot of gaps in the information I was looking for!
This is truly the “Protecting trees from deer and rodents” resource I wished was available when I was getting started. I’m excited to share with you everything I’ve learned along the way!
Wow, what can I say! This is such a great go-to easy to follow guide on protecting newly planted young trees and shrubs from deer and rodents throughout an edible landscape without using a costly and time-intensive perimeter fence. I hadn’t the slightest idea of why I should protect my newly planted trees and how I should go about doing that, yet this course clearly explains this and more. I especially enjoyed learning how to be in greater reciprocity with the land I am tending. Weaving research, personal experience, and humor, this course taught me strategies and techniques to reduce deer and rodent pressure in a way that feels in harmony with the natural world I am stewarding.
Stephen Saladyga — Gardener and Homesteader, North Carolina
This course was very comprehensive and helpful for anyone who cares about their trees and also about local wildlife. I enjoyed how I got to learn about trees and plants that do well in my bioregion of Southern Oregon! Ann and Noel have a lot of experience growing in this area and can especially offer locals a lot of tips to choose great varieties and more quickly achieve young tree success. When young trees are properly selected and then protected early on, it can ensure that they produce fruit, shade and beauty for many years to come. All done with acknowledgment of the delicate balance of nature, by allowing wildlife to enjoy aspects of the garden as inherent wild space and making sure they still can migrate through reasonably and access their natural food sources. I am super happy I read through this course content before planting my new fruit trees on our property! We have a ton of land and as Noel mentions, fencing our whole place isn’t feasible so doing a lot of these small scale techniques catered to individual trees is going to be great for us moving forward!
Colby Otto — Co-founder of the Limpy Creek Forest School and Local Homesteader, Oregon
I wish I’d had this guide 12 years ago when we started our homestead and planted our first trees and shrubs. It would have saved me time, money and the disappointment of losing more than a few trees. You’ll find lots of practical, low-cost strategies inside the course; and just the right mix of personal reflection, philosophy and animal psychology to make for interesting reading. Highly recommended!
Matt Stern — Creator of the The Tool Merchants, Oregon
This fruit and nut tree protection course impressed me with its in-depth knowledge! Preserving natural wildlife corridors is a priority for me, and I’m thrilled the course offered solutions that protect our trees while fostering a healthy environment for wildlife.
Johnny — Homestead Gardener, Oregon
Get the Course!
Whether you’re planting a few fruit trees for your family or starting a small orchard, this course offers clear strategies and techniques that you can put in place right away to protect fruit and nut trees from deer and rodents with confidence.
Gardeners wanting to protect their trees from deer and/or rodents.
Homesteaders that don’t want to fence their entire property to plant trees.
Nature lovers wanting to co-exist with wildlife.
Students wanting to learn forest gardening skills.
Anyone wanting to learn how nature grows trees with deer.
Gardeners that want to learn deer resistant qualities of common and uncommon fruit and nut trees and shrubs.
This course isn’t for:
People that want to exclude deer from their entire property at all costs.
Those who don’t believe there can be a grey area between gardens and nature/wildlife.
Those who don’t care to garden more naturally.
Anyone preferring to wage war on deer, rodents or other “pests”.
Those not caring to deepen their relationship with trees.
Anyone who thinks nature is simply here to benefit humans.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long will I have access to this course?
This course is evergreen so you will have ongoing access! You can access the course anytime. Progress at your own pace.
Are you available for help during the course?
Yes! We’d love to answer questions that may come up as you protect your trees from deer and rodents. Every lesson in the course has a comment section. We suggest asking questions in the comments so that everyone can learn together. You’ll receive an email as soon as your question is answered.
What is the format of this online course?
The materials are presented as a series of lessons, organized into modules. You can follow the course chronologically or jump around as desired. The course is a mix of written lessons and many detailed photos illustrating the concepts presented.
Do you offer refunds?
Due to the nature of sharing digital content, we do not offer refunds.
Is this course intended for rural gardeners?
The short answer is that this course will help both rural and suburban gardeners individually protect their trees from deer and rodents without having to fence the entire property.
While deer and other wildlife may be more prevalent in rural areas, more and more suburban and city limits are becoming inundated with deer.
The methods presented in this course will help you protect your trees whether you are living in or out of city limits.
What if my deer or rodents are different than yours?
Here in Southern Oregon our primary deer is the whitetail deer and our rodents include jack rabbits, gophers, ground squirrels, tree squirrels and mice. Of those, the whitetail deer, jack rabbits and gophers are my primary concerns with respect to protecting trees.
In this course I did my best to generalize the advise and lessons presented so that you can adapt them to the exact species of deer or rodents in your local region.
For the most part, following the concepts and methods in this course will work for most gardeners in the temperate climate, but you may need to make some adjustments. For example the height of your deer, the size of your rodents or their specific behaviors can vary from species to species. I make an effort within the course to point out those areas so that you are not caught off guard.
The deer here are huge in numbers!! Are you sure a perimeter fence is not necessary?
Geographic conditions will affect how large a family of deer will be in any given region. Open valleys, for example, support larger herds or families of deer than in the hills. An open savannah will support larger families than a dense forest. Lack of predators have also helped deer overpopulate in many regions.
The truth is every landscape is different and deer pressure will vary from place to place.
This course highlights many techniques that you have in your toolkit which allow adjusting the level of deer protection relative to the amount of pressure that deer are putting (or will put) on your trees and shrubs.
The same concepts allow you to adjust your level of deer protection on an individual tree by tree basis, based on its level of deer resistance.
You’ll learn to take into consideration local deer family/herd size, tree age & size, your climate, your pruning style, the deer resistance of each given species and your level of risk tolerance, as you individually protect each tree.
I offer you, the designer of your garden, orchard or food forest, the very best from my experience and knowledge so that you can design and adjust deer protection as needed in your unique situation.
