What plants and flowers do not attract deer?

Some reliable perennials are bee balm, black-eyed Susan, obedience plant (physostegia), phlox, lobelia siphilitica, the various flowering sages, rugosa roses, clematis, mallow, perennial poppies, globe thistle, fall anemones, bleeding hearts, monkshood, foxglove, catmint (nepeta), Russian sage, the loosestrifes, astilbe, yarrow, iris, and daffodils. A lot of these are aromatic.

There are nice ground covers also; myrtle, sweet woodruff, creeping Jenny, lilies-of-the-valley, brunnera, annual forget-me-nots (will reseed easily) the lamiums and Bishop’s weed.

Deer devour tulip bulbs, all the lilies, rhododendron, azaleas, yews, sunflowers, and peony foliage after they bloom.

No guarantees however. Deer are unpredictable so it’s trial and error, which I have been doing for 28 years, also in the NE on 20 acres, many wooded where the deer lurk and plot and learn new devious tricks.

Talk also to your local garden center.

What doesn’t work; hot pepper, moth balls, smelly soap on strings, and both male and female urine.

Most herbs, sometimes Geranium, exotic grasses with serrated stalks like Myscanthus, pampas grass, Zebra grass, some bamboos, Marigolds, Hawthornes, Smoke trees.
Forget roses and Willows,a couple of their favorites.
I live in a high volume deer zone too and anything that is not fenced or potted on a porch or deck ( even then, they sometimes are bold enough to come up onto the porch/deck ) is fair game. Ask at your local nursery for deer resistant plants.

Welcome to fluther and the Northeast, deer central. There are two families of deer around my house, each of them about a dozen deer strong. They don’t bother my lilacs, and I’ve had good luck with the soap. If I want to protect something I’ll plant a lot of garlic around it. They don’t bother stuff after the garlic is up. But if it’s a tough Winter, like last year, all bets are off.

My deer devour all my lilac buds and the tender shoots.

@gailcalled Interesting. The most I’ve ever got was some stem grazing last year.

I have several lilacs in a fenced-in area and you can see where the deer have leaned heavily on the fencing and bent it, inward, in order to get closer to the lilacs.

Haha..reminds of when I temped at a Florist shop during Valentines season a few years ago. We had several customers call in that their flower arrangements were eaten off their porches after we delivered them and took precautions to put the flowers in as safe a place as we could access on the property. It’s a jungle out here. lol

Supposedly holly bushes are safe but deer ate mine last year. They seem to let quickly multiplying plants like black-eyed susan live while taking out the slow growing ones. Thanks Bambi!

@gailcalled Are your woods mostly old growth, mature trees? Mine are new growth, maybe plenty for them to eat.

I believe deer don’t care for most ferns.

Old growth, including huge mature hemlocks and white pines and the maples, oaks, black cherry, white, grey and black birch. Suman and quaking Aspens on the wood edges.

The deer eat all the hemlock saplings so I have no new growth. I schlepped young balsams back from Lake Placid one autumn and paid someone to plant them near my little creek. By the next morning, they were eaten to the ground.

I have not tried this myself but have heard that deer will not eat rosemary and dislike it to such an extent that rosemary bushes can be planted as a sort of barrier that they will not pass through. That second part sounds unlikely to me, but plenty of sources confirm that they won’t eat it, at least.

A similar mythology has sprung up about marigolds deterring the deer because of the pungent aroma.

That’s sumac and not suman.

@LostinParadise; True about the ferns; I have both cinnamon and lady ferns growing in my woods and have transplanted them everywhere.