Hampton Community Online

 
     The cicada invasion of 2004 makes us appreciate this year's relative quiet in the neighborhood.  Instead of cicadas, spring usually brings only flowers, showers, and more deer.  And more deer.  So the theme for this spring is deer-proof gardening.  The cicadas were messy, noisy and damaged some young trees and shrubs, but they were not the threat that presented by our hoofed marauders.
     Deer damage is not universal in Hampton.  It seems more prevalent along certain wooded corridors through which these walking Veg-O-Matics move.  Deer make a circuit from the Loch Raven watershed through connecting wooded lots into the neighborhood.  If you have a wooded lot you can often pick out the narrow deer trails they have trampled and nibbled on over the years.  They are most comfortable where they can venture out from wooded cover into your garden for a meals, and make a dash back to the woods when startled.  You might notice the loss of under story plant diversity, particularly in the watershed.  Before the white-tailed deer population explosion  which started about 20 years ago, Hampton's forested environment had an unusually large variety of native plants.  However, the regional herd has grown so large, most of the edible native species have been wiped out.  This is not all bad - deer love poison ivy.  With the natural vegetation rapidly dwindling, there is not much left except your yard.
     When Hampton was a new subdivision landscaping commonly include azaleas, yews, tulips, hostas and pachysandra in foundation plantings.   Traditional English border gardens were popular and included roses, daylilies, sedum, bulbs, and annual and perennial bedding plants.
     In the 1980's we began to see something strange.  Our yews and azaleas began to loose leaves and shoots in a manner that suggested an insect attack of biblical, locust-plague proportions.  But we never saw the bugs at work.  Next, roses and bedding plants began to disappear.  Hikers strolling down to the lake began to realize the woods looked as though they had been tended by some demented gardener:  the usual under story thickets and wild flowers were disappearing.  The lush, green forest was replaced by a well-manicured woodland, looking like an expertly pruned public park.
      It was about this time we began seeing a lot of deer at almost any time of the day.  Prior to the 1980's it was an occasional treat to see deer in you yard.  But now they were crashing through our living room windows and smashing into our cars.   They were also pruning our shrubs and tree to about 5 feet off the ground and weeding our gardens of everything except the weeds.
     How do we coexist with our woodland neighbors without asphalting the lawn and installing plastic plants?  Our first, best defense is educating ourselves about deer diet and behavior, and an understanding of what deer prefer to eat.

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