If I had the deer problems some folks have, I would not want to discourage
them too much, I might even plant stuff they liked. I would create largish
arbor-gated enclosed gardens for sensitive things, deer resistant things
outside the wooden fences. This should also permit me to have a couple of
goats that ran semi-free, the gardens rather than the animals being fenced
in. This may too idealistic & I'd want to shoot the gawdamn deer in no
time if I really had that problem, but I would like to think I'd retain
the feeling of Good Luck to live & garden in the midst of wildlife.

One never-likely-to-be-achieved dream, however, has been to own a tiny
patch of forest, the understory of which I could turn into an azalea &
flowering shrub paradise. If I got something like that going & deer came
in & ate all the blooms & leaves with fair regularity, I might find my
idealistic sentiments toward wildlife getting a little bunged up. But I'd
hope that if a semi-wild flowering shrub garden was extensive enough, it
could stand a little "natural pruning" from the lips of deer, as I'm kinda
assuming there wouldn't be a whole band of elk concentrating on destroying
my woodland area, but only a couple deer now & then.

I remember seeing a little documentary about beavers & the damage they can
do to private property. There was one old gent who discovered a big area
of his property turned into a lake by beavers, & though at first he was
very annoyed because he even had to jack up his house to keep it dry, he
decided he'd try to live with the beavers & give up that area of his
farmland from farming. He was SO charming out by his "lake" which had
become heavily populated with ducks, swans, geese, frogs, wading birds,
muskrats -- & the owner was very happy to have received such a gift of
nature from a little family of beavers. Well, of course, not many people
have enough land that they can just turn a lot of it over to wildlife, but
what a good idea it would be if we all could. It would mean the presence
of humans needn't mean the extinction of everything else.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/