Flowers can serve many purposes on a homestead! Along with beauty, these deer resistant flowers also offer medicinal, herbal, and pollinator benefits to support your homestead’s needs.
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I absolutely love flowers. They are just so incredibly beautiful and add so much to a homestead space. And not only do they have beauty, but they are also wonderful contributors to the natural ecosystem by bringing in pollinators.
But pollinators are not the only animals that flowers sometimes attract. Some of the most beautiful flowers that are so highly anticipated are so often eaten off by a pesky deer who thinks you’ve planted these flowers for their eating pleasure.
In this post, we’ll go over some deer resistant perennial flowers to plant to attract pollinators but not deer. You can enjoy these blooms again and again throughout the years while you feed those pollinators and not those (pesky) deer.
Table of Contents
- Perennials vs. Annuals: What’s the difference?
- Determining Deer Resistant Perennial Flowers
- Black-Eyed Susans
- Daisies
- Coneflowers
- Bee Balm
- Iris
- Share this post!
- More to Read
Perennials vs. Annuals: What’s the difference?
The main difference between a perennial and an annual is how long you’ll be able to enjoy the flower. Annual flowers only bloom one season. Once the frost comes, they are done and will not bloom again in that place the next year. In contrast, perennials are flowers that return year after year. They reseed themselves or are able to regrow after winter. Perennials are a one-time investment, which is different than annuals that you need to buy each year to enjoy.
There are a huge number of beautiful annual deer resistant flowers to consider adding to a pollinator bed, too! Marigolds, cosmos, sunflowers, and zinnias are amongst my favorites of those!
In this post, though, I want to offer you flower suggestions that create a flower garden that will feed pollinators for many years, give you blooms for many years, and will offer the most blooms for your investment.
Determining Deer Resistant Perennial Flowers
To really figure out which flowers were going to be the best, I did some research.
First, I stepped back and tried to figure out which flowers I noticed in the natural world around me. If I’m seeing them bloom on abandoned lots or in meadows and fields, odds are they are probably deer resistant. The next steps were to confirm these theories by doing a bit more research to confirm what I had predicted. With that information, we have a list of deer resistant perennial flowers that will also serve as great pollinator food for years to come.
Black-Eyed Susans
Black-Eyed Susans are a a beautiful yellow star-shaped flower with a black center. They are a native plant that grows wild along ditches and in fields. Black-Eyed Susans are a wonderful source of nectar for butterflies and other beneficial pollinators that bloom throughout the summer. They are easy to care for, and are a rugged and durable plant. They will often thrive in any type of environment, from full sun or partial shade. Deer often avoid Black-Eyed Susans because of their fuzzy stems, which are unpalpable to the deer.
Black-Eyed Susans are also thought to serve medicinally, helping to cure earaches, treat snake bites and worms, and help treat colds.
You can purchase your own Black-Eyed Susans here.
Daisies
Daisies are another native plant that can be seen covering open fields and meadows in the summertime, often covered with butterflies. This deer resistant perennial is a beautiful bright and cheerful flower, with white petals and a bright yellow center. They make a great cut-flower, and last for weeks in a vase filled with water.
Daisies don’t like soggy soil, and are actually quite drought tolerant. Planting this perennial in full sun will give it a happy place to grow.
Daisies can be brewed into a tea to help fight coughs, bronchitis, and swelling.
You can find daisies to add to your own flower bed here.
Coneflowers
Coneflowers are a beautiful addition to your flower garden! They come in a wide variety of shades and colors, making them a “wow” factor to any perennial flower bed. The spiny center of the flower, as well as its smell, make this plant deer resistant.
Recently, I received a Green Jewel Coneflower from Nature Hills Nursery, and I couldn’t have been more pleased! It is a beautiful and unique vibrant green color which is unlike any other flower in my flower garden.
Coneflowers, too, are thought to have medicinal properties. For centuries, people have used coneflowers as a way to purify the blood, as well as a treatment for colds and respiratory illnesses, treat dizziness, and help with inflammatory conditions.
You can find a wide variety of coneflowers to choose from here.
Bee Balm
I recently discovered a beautiful patch of wild bee balm just a few yards away from our vegetable garden, and only a few feet away from our small apple tree orchard. They were just beautiful, blooming away and completely covered with happy bumblebees. What a welcome addition to our garden space!
Bee balm is a native plant, known for its pollinator attraction abilities, beauty, and medicinal uses. Bee balm can be used as an herbal medicine for digestive issues such as bloating and nausea. It is a well-loved pollinator favorite, supporting not only bees, but many other pollinators like hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, and beneficial wasps. The seed heads can serve as a food source for birds in the winter.
You can purchase Bee Balm to add to your flower garden here.
Iris
Because of the iris’s strong fragrance and apparent bad taste, this beautiful perennial is deer resistant. The iris is a native plant to North America, and grows well in wet environments. You’ll often see them along swamp edges or in wet ditches as you drive along the road.
Irises are very easy to care for once they’re established. It likes full sun, as well as wet (almost soggy) soils. Their beautiful blooms will continue from late spring to mid summer.
Irises are a good source of nectar for pollinators. Hummingbirds and bees are amongst its top attractors.
You can find a wide variety of irises to choose from for your own garden here.
Share this post!
Pollinators are blessings to have around a homestead. Be sure to share this post to help others create their own deer resistant pollinator garden!
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