Learn how to keep your trees safe from wildlife inexpensively and naturally.
You don’t have to install a huge, costly, labor intensive deer fence around your entire property to protect your food producing trees and shrubs from deer.
In Protect Fruit and Nut Trees from Deer and Rodents, we’ll walk you through our tried and true methods for individually protecting trees from wildlife damage.
We can honor the deer and other wildlife, by allowing them safe passage through our orchards, as part of the greater landscape, without sacrificing the health of our trees.
Because when we can see deer and rodents as more than “pests”, when we can value their lives and appreciate their natural behaviors—We can enjoy a more connected, meaningful relationship with the wild animals and our trees.
Why We Protect Our Trees?
Wildlife have a right to exist and eat, but we want to reliably grow food for ourselves too.
🌳 Protect trees from deer browse ✋🏻 Set physical boundaries 🛡️ Choose exclusions or deterrents 🐇 Avoid losing trees to rodents 🦌 Prevent damage from buck rub
🌳 Protect trees from deer browse ✋🏻 Set physical boundaries 🛡️ Choose exclusions or deterrents 🐇 Avoid losing trees to rodents 🦌 Prevent damage from buck rub
Grow Fruit & Nut Trees Alongside Local Wildlife
After completing this course, you’ll know…
* How to protect trees * Habits of deer & rodents * Natural deer resistance * Deterrents vs exclusions * Ethical solutions
With 17 Lessons Step-by-Step Instructions
Including detailed photos and a robust resource guide.
This Course Includes
Numerous examples demonstrating our tried and true methods for individually protecting trees and shrubs from deer and rodents. We explain the pros and cons of each option. Detailed guides and instructions are provided.
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 for 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.
Designed for Individuals
Just as no two humans are the same, no two landscapes, no two orchards and no two tree species are the same.
✓ Evaluate how much deer fencing you really need.
✓ Let go of the need for absolute control.
✓ Consider the relative deer resistance of different species of food producing trees and shrubs.
Meet Your Teacher
Hi, I’m Noel!
Over a decade ago, permaculture led me down a path of forest gardening. Looking to nature for direction helped me appreciate diversity of life and learn to garden more naturally. I enjoy growing a wide range of common and uncommon fruit and nut trees in our family’s orchards.
Growing trees with minimal protection has given me a wealth of experience. I am appreciating 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 my green friends (aka plants) offer abundant health and unconditional love.
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
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
Protect Your Trees!
Enjoy immediate access to the entire course for life.
Wondering if this course is for you? No problem! If it doesn’t live up to your expectations, we’ll give you a full refund anytime in the 1st week of enrollment.
This course is for:
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 wild trees in nature can grow alongside deer.
Gardeners who want to learn deer resistant qualities of common and uncommon fruit and nut trees and shrubs.
This course isn’t for:
People who want to exclude deer from their entire property at all costs.
Those who don’t believe there can be a grey area of co-existance between gardens and 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.
How this Course is Unique
1. I “Talk” with Deer and Trees
I continually offer deer access to leaves from many kinds of trees to learn their preferences.
2. Resistance of Edible Trees
I share first hand experience of the inherent deer resistance of many food producing trees.
3. Flexible Protection
These tried and true methods of protection are designed to be flexible to meet your needs.
4. Abundant Observations
I share valuable personal observations and stories about habits of our local deer & rodents.
5. Honoring the Wildlife
I have a reverence for the many kinds of wild animals who we are lucky to share this land with.
With Bonus Classes
Natural Deer Resistance
Some fruit and nut trees actually have some amount of built in deer resistance. It’s a spectrum! Learn how to gauge the relative level of deer resistance for many common and uncommon species of edible trees and shrubs by observing their qualities.
Learning from Nature
Trees and deer coexist in nature. Why can’t our fruit and nut trees co-exist with deer? It’s not a binary! Let’s learn about natural deer resistance strategies by observing trees in the wild and how they and the deer interact and coexist gracefully for mutual benefit.
How I Grow Trees With Deer
Hungry deer and rodents have been a major concern as I planted hundreds of trees & shrubs over the past decade.
Deer fencing our entire property is financially, physically and topographically prohibitive—So I sought creative, budget-friendly solutions to protect our trees.
Allowing deer, rabbits and other wildlife safe passage through most of the land our family stewards, while still protecting our food-bearing trees, gives me great joy.
After years of research and experimentation, planting trees in the presence of deer and rodents has become fruitful and rewarding.
This is truly the “Protecting trees from deer and rodents” resource I wished I had access to a decade ago. I’m so excited to share everything I’ve learned along the way!
This course was very comprehensive and helpful for anyone who cares about their trees and also about local wildlife. Ann and Noel have a lot of experience growing and can especially folks 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
Your Trees, Your Design
You are choosing which trees and where to plant them—Why not also choose how best to protect them? Become empowered with choice, as the designer of the unique deer & rodent protection scheme for your trees.
This course is best for:
Rural gardeners
Urban homesteaders
Permaculture designs
Planting a Personal Orchard or Food Forest?
You don’t have to completely exclude the animals from your orchards and food forests. We can garden more naturally by sharing more of our space with our animal kin.
With Protect Fruit and Nut Trees from Deer and Rodents you can enjoy more options to design the homestead orchard of your dreams, all while living more reciprocally with the local wildlife. It truly can be more than just “us vs them”.
After all, planting trees is entering into relationship with our green relatives. Why not extend that invitation for relationship beyond the plant kingdom? We and our trees can all enjoy more dynamic, meaningful relationships with local animal wildlife.
Protect Your Trees!
Enjoy immediate access to the entire course for life.
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
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.
Is this course intended for rural or urban 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.
In recent decades, more and more suburban and city limits are becoming inundated with deer. Deer are so adaptable!
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?
The short answer is: Yes, this course will help your protect your trees from just about any kind of deer and rodents because the concepts are the same.
Long answer: Here in Southern Oregon, our primary deer is the blacktail deer (mule deer) and our rodents include gophers, jack rabbits, ground squirrels, voles, tree squirrels, rats and mice. Of those, the blacktail deer, gophers, voles, jack rabbits and mice are my primary concerns with respect to protecting trees because they are most common in and around our gardens and are most likely to try to eat our 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 (e.g. moose are taller and heavier than blacktail deer), the size of your rodents (e.g. porcupines and beavers can reach higher than mice) 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 prepared, rather than 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.
What if this course isn’t for me?
If you purchase the course and realize it’s not what you were hoping for, we’ve got your back. Email us within 1 week of your purchase and we’ll refund the full amount, no questions asked.
