En Garde Deer Defense can help stop the deer destruction of your hydrangeas and roses and day-lilies and hostas and geraniums and more
By Mitch Allen
A co-worker of mine recently invested in a beautiful rose at a local garden center. It reminded her of the roses her grandmother used to tend. “I don’t normally spend this kind of money on a plant,” she said. “It really spoke to me. It was beautiful.”
She planted the rose with great care, digging the hole extra wide and enhancing the soil. She even said a brief, encouraging blessing over the plant to let it know it was loved and to give it confidence.
It didn’t matter. The next day the rose had been reduced to a collection of thorny stalks, its beautiful blossoms devoured by deer.
“We hear your friend’s story a lot,” says Jeff Ardo, founder of En Garde Deer Defense. “Deer are especially voracious right now because the does—the female deer—are pregnant or nursing, which require extra nourishment and make the animals even hungrier than usual for your hostas and hydrangeas.”
Yes, You Can Stop Deer Now
But Jeff and his team of highly trained technicians can do something about deer with a proprietary deterrent spray that actually works. This formula is not available online or in garden centers or home improvement stores because the ingredients that make it effective cannot be stored on a shelf. “We mix our spray fresh every morning,” Jeff says. “It’s effective, weather-resistant, transparent, and virtually odorless to humans.”
The spray is so effective it can even deter fawns, which have little to no sense of taste or smell in the first few weeks as they are learning to eat.
Intense Training
Having an effective spray is only half the battle; it has to be applied properly. En Garde’s spray technicians undergo highly comprehensive training, including an online test in which each tech must identify 90 different species of plants and declare whether they are vulnerable to deer. New employees also undergo a four- to six-week, hands-on, in-the-field apprenticeship program with a trained technician before being allowed to work alone.
You may be tempted to tell your En Garde techs where to spray, but it’s best to let them determine that. “We have a lot of training and years of experience, so we know which strategies work best,” Jeff assures. “We usually recommend spraying not only landscape plants, but also the entire perimeter of the property. If we make your entire yard unattractive to deer, they simply move on.”
How Often to Spray?
Jeff says an application every three weeks is effective in 80% of cases, but sometimes it takes more. “It depends on the speed of plant growth,” he explains. “And that’s related to plant species, soil quality, rain, and nutrients.”
En Garde features three popular frequency programs: The Standard Program is an application every three weeks; the Plus Program includes applications now through the end of July; the Platinum Program carries the service through the end of October; and the Buds and Blooms Program strategically protects your most important, valuable, and vulnerable plants with a Standard spray every three weeks, supplemented by spraying only certain ‘buds and blooms’ every 10 days.
En Garde Deer Defense serves all of Northeast Ohio. To schedule your free trial, call 440-447-0022, or fill out a free trial form online at EGDeerDefense.com.