Safeguard your garden

Discover bulbs deer and vole may leave alone

While I hesitate to ever call a bulb or plant vole and deer “proof,” we can choose bulbs and other plants that vole and deer don’t like.

If you do an online search, you’ll see information about vole and deer resistant flower bulbs, but some aren’t easy to grow in Oklahoma. The following bulbs are.

1. Daffodils are members of the Amaryllis family, as are summer snowflakes and snowdrops. They all contain a bitter, poisonous substance called lycorine. While snowdrops don’t grow well in Oklahoma, daffodils and summer snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’) are easy to grow in our climate, and they can form colonies of beautiful flowers if you let their leaves decay naturally.
2. Spider lilies (Lycoris radiata) and Lycoris squamigera, sometimes called surprise lilies, resurrection lilies or naked ladies, are both deer and vole resistant. L. squamigera foliage appears in spring, goes dormant in summer and then the flowers emerge on thin, naked stems in my garden in August. L. radiata usually flowers for me in September, and after flowering produces leaves that remain until early summer the following year.
3. I find large globe alliums, those stars of every late spring bulb garden, very hard to keep going in my garden. This is probably due to our hot summers, but the smaller alliums perform extremely well for me. ‘Serendipity,’ ‘Millenium,’ ‘Bubble Bath’ and ‘Lavender Bubbles’ are all named varieties of the small alliums. Also, although garlic chives are deer and vole resistant, I would not suggest planting them because they are terribly aggressive. I’ve been trying to remove them from my garden for 30 years.
4. Siberian squill (Scilla sibirica) are the smallest bulbs topping out at about two inches, but they are also the most brilliant blue flowers. Even cooler, they have blue pollen, and honey bees and other small bees love them.
5. Glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa forbesii) are quite beautiful and fairly unique in Oklahoma gardens. Although you’ll read that they reseed readily, I don’t find that they multiply or reseed very quickly in my garden. Maybe I dig in my beds too much, or use too much mulch.
6. Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica) are beautiful planted with late flowering daffodils. They come in blue, pink and white. I love the blue ones. While considered invasive in some states, they aren’t in Oklahoma, but they do spread. I grow mine on the east side of my house so they get protection from our afternoon sun.
7. Grape hyacinth (Muscari sp.) aren’t bulbs I have much luck with, but other Oklahoma gardeners seem to grow them well.
8. Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) is one of the earliest bulbs to flower in my garden, and I look forward to these tiny, sulphur yellow beauties each spring.
9. Spring star flower (Ipheion uniflora) are underutilized, but also critter proof.
10. Dutch iris (Iris sp.) with its string-like leaves is unappetizing to animals too.

Another thing that helps keep voles from eating your tastier bulbs like tulips is planting them near a sidewalk, wall or other obstruction that diverts their path. Also, tidying up the garden and removing some of the leaves will help deter them. They like messy gardens with easy-to-dig soil — that would be my garden.

There are no easy answers to deter deer and voles, but by planting these mammal resistant bulbs, you’re at least eliminating some of the spring buffet.