Deer-Resistant Shade Garden Plan, 28ft x 16ft, Zones 7b-8a (PDF Download)

A drawn, to-scale planting plan for a 28 ft x 16 ft shaded bed. Eight species, twenty-eight plants, and every one of them carries deer resistance printed on its own NC State Extension page.

DEER AND SHADE TOGETHER IS THE HARDEST BRIEF IN A PIEDMONT GARDEN

Deer-resistant lists are overwhelmingly sun plants - yarrow, lavender, catmint, russian sage. Shade lists are overwhelmingly the things deer eat first, hosta above all. Put the two lists side by side and the overlap is small, which is exactly why the bed under your trees keeps getting stripped.

So this plan was built from the intersection, not from either list. Every species here is printed by NC State as shade tolerant AND carries Deer in its Resistance To Challenges field.

WHAT YOU GET (7-page PDF, instant download)

- The plan, drawn to scale, on a full page
- Plant schedule: 28 plants, 8 species, with mature size, light and position
- A USDA hardiness zone range on every single plant, looked up individually
- What the plan assumes about your site, so you can rule it out before buying anything
- The plant I rejected, and exactly why
- Installation sequence, first-winter protection, and what to cut when
- Sources, cited

THE PLANT I TURNED DOWN

Blue wood sedge is a lovely blue-green sedge for exactly this situation and I wanted it in the front band. Its NC State page prints no Resistance To Challenges field at all - the Problems section says only "No serious problems." That is not a statement that deer leave it alone, it is an absence of a statement. Pennsylvania sedge, which does carry the tag, does the same job.

WHY FERNS ARE THE BACKBONE

Three of the eight species are ferns, and that is not laziness. Ferns are among the very few plant groups that are both genuinely shade adapted and consistently listed as deer resistant. Christmas fern holds its fronds through winter, so the bed is not bare from November to April.

DEER RESISTANT IS NOT DEER PROOF

Anybody who tells you a plant is deer proof is selling something. These species are documented as browsed last. A deer under real winter pressure will taste almost anything once. What resistance buys you is that the bed is not the first place they go. If your pressure is severe, a documented plant list slows the damage but fencing is what stops it.

THIS IS NOT A DRY SHADE PLAN

Four of these species are documented as needing consistent moisture. Under an established oak, competing with tree roots for water, they will decline. If your shade is the dry kind, this is the wrong plan and my Dry Shade Garden Plan is the right one.

WHERE IT APPLIES

Drawn from USDA Zones 7b-8a - the North Carolina Piedmont, where I work. That band also covers upstate South Carolina, north Georgia, middle and east Tennessee, central and southern Virginia, and the warm Piedmont edge into Maryland. All eight species start at Zone 3a or 5a.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

Not a design for your address - I have not seen your site, trees or soil. Not an engineered drawing. I am a licensed North Carolina landscape contractor (CL.1872), not a professional engineer and not a registered landscape architect.

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