Ask the head gardener: What's eating the young plants in my borders, and how can I stop it?

Telegraph

14-02-2025

Dear Tom,
My herbaceous border is a great joy, but last year many of my young plants simply disappeared. I thought it might be slugs, rabbits or mice (we live in the country), and surrounded some of the plants with copper netting. I sprinkled anti-rabbit and pigeon stuff all round the border, put bird-friendly slug pellets near affected plants, and watered with ginger and chilli tea. My campanula was constantly nibbled to the ground, and new sprouting tops of hostas were nibbled and never recovered. Can you suggest what might be eating my young plants, so I can protect them this year? The garden is well protected against deer and we don't have any pets.
–Mary
Dear Mary,
Last summer must have been one of the worst that I can recall for slug damage, and I can sympathise with the frustration that you feel. Furthermore, at this time of year, mice can eat their way through several seedlings, when young plants are especially vulnerable. Not only are plants expensive, but all the protective paraphernalia that goes with trying to protect them can be even more damaging to the bank balance. When a plant is damaged or eaten, as gardeners we can help to counteract that loss of foliage by regularly feeding the plants to help them regrow – but the underlying problem needs to be solved.
Whenever there is a discussion about wildlife in the garden, particularly when that wildlife damages our plants, our responses can be wide-ranging. Your outlook might be to have a live-and-let-live ethos, or, let's just say, at the other end of the scale. My response would be to focus on physical barriers where appropriate, and ultimately to accept that it's difficult to exclude rabbits, mice and slugs entirely, so informed plant choices may be a solution that you consider.
I fell into the trap recently of ordering a few sonic devices to try to deter deer and rabbits, with little success. The best results that I achieved to enable those young plants to grow to a size that made them less vulnerable, and the attacks less devastating, was to install a chicken-wire fence around the perimeter of the bed. If the wire is kept tight when attached to the posts, it isn't as obtrusive as you may think; however, the aesthetics do need to be considered in a domestic situation.
Young woody plants can be protected with individual cages when they are young, or trees can be made safe by using a spiral rabbit guard around the base to prevent the bark being compromised. Here are my top 10 choices for plants that rabbits are less likely to eat in your garden, which may offer a more practical solution than a physical barrier:
Buddleja
Choisya
Agapanthus
Daphne
Hydrangea
Weigela
Nepeta (catmint)
Wet summers will exacerbate a slug problem in a garden, but when plants freshly emerge they are extremely vulnerable. Slugs will start to breed in the early spring, and one of the best ways to control numbers is to start that prevention early, around the middle of February, to prevent successive generations causing a problem. Trapping slugs with upturned grapefruit skins and beer traps will help to reduce the breeding population. Even the more wildlife-friendly slug pellets can be detrimental to the ecosystem within a garden, so I would advise against using these. Biological control is an option with your slugs, and if you apply nematodes in April, that will help to reduce numbers (they're available to buy online). Here are some suggestions for some plants that are less appealing to slugs and snails which may be worth considering:
Anemone
Astrantia
Digitalis
Geraniums
Salvias
Seedlings and young plants in greenhouses are especially vulnerable to mice, so it is worth reducing the population before you start sowing seeds. Snap or live traps are an option, but when relocating mice, make sure that you do it a good distance away from your house, around two miles away, to ensure that they don't return.