Protection for Your Tree and Shrub Plantings

By Jeff Osborne, Forest Stewardship Program Associate, James C. Finley Center for Private Forests at Penn State

Before you pick up your planting stock in this year you should consider the options for protecting them from animals seeking to eat or otherwise damage them. If you secure healthy planting stock and properly plant them in a reasonable soil, then your two main opponents to having a successful planting are drought and animal damage. While we can’t control the weather, we can work to protect new plantings from damage. The level of protection required for new plantings depends on the height of the planting stock and the occurrence of deer and rodents in the area. Let us explore protection options for stock that is taller than six feet, and stock that is shorter than six feet.

At six feet tall the stock should have sufficient height to maintain enough leaves above deer browse height to continue to grow well. If you live in elk country, you will have to add a few feet to that minimum height. If you are planting taller stock, you will still have to contend with antlered animals’ predilection for rubbing woody stems. A split tree tube that covers the stem up to four feet should provide protection, although some tree tubes are weaker than others and could be punctured by antlers. Black corrugated drainpipe that is four inches in diameter can also be split to envelope a stem and provide more puncture protection. You could also use six-inch wide material which will leave your planted tree more resilient if they are rubbed after the protection is removed since, if rubbed, the wound will ruin a smaller percentage of the diameter of the tree. This will allow more water and nutrients to flow up and down so it can heal faster from the wound. You can also be resourceful and recycle discarded tree tubes, PVC, or another similar pipe. Tubes used for protection should be placed into the ground a few inches. This will discourage smaller rodents from crawling into the tubes and making a nest. Rodents nesting in tubes often strip off bark at the base of the stem sometimes girdling the trees.

For stems under six feet tall you will want to protect their foliage and their stems until they grow past that height, but you will need to continue to protect the stem for years after. You can do this with hardwood trees using a five-foot-tall tree tube and a wooden stake, however wooden stakes can be pushed over and broken by aggressive bucks or playful bears. You can also fence off a narrow area using metal t-posts that are six feet tall and four-foot-tall woven wire fence, keeping the edge of the fence about two feet away from the stems and keeping the width of the fenced area less than five feet wide to discourage deer from jumping into the area. Using this method may require some rodent protection using a tube or hardware cloth up to two feet high around individual stems. If you are planting many seedlings in an area, it may be less work and require less material to establish an exclusion fence. You can establish an exclusion fence for deer and larger rodents using a poly mesh fencing that has 1-inch squares and is seven feet tall. You can secure the fence using metal or wooden posts two feet taller than the fence so you can set the posts two feet deep. Establishing this tall of a fence may be a daunting and expensive task, so you should estimate and compare the costs and time required for methods protecting individual stems vs. area exclusion methods for your individual project.

It may be hard to tell how aggressively animals will attack your trees and shrubs before you plant them. Some trees and shrubs are advertised as deer resistant, but that refers to the preference deer have for eating them when given other options. In winter when the ground is covered in snow, and the deer have eaten most of what is in reach, they will resort to eating rhododendron and conifer tree species that many people are able to usually plant without protection. It is best to establish a smaller planting as the first planting on your property and give it the level of protection you want to give to larger subsequent plantings. Then, in the year after the first planting, check the trees and shrubs, and the tubes and fencing, for evidence of damage. Knowledge gained this year should help with plantings in subsequent years, by determining your level of risk to the stems and needs for protection.