repellent

This summer, I planted tomatoes, strawberries, celery, Swiss chard, pole beans, and a variety of other vegetables and herbs on my deck.

After living in San Diego for several years, my husband and I moved to a small town in the Pacific Northwest where our closest neighbors are raccoons, owls, and, most abundantly, deer. We see them at all times of the day: in the morning from our bedroom window, in the afternoon grazing in the woods in front of our house, and at night, when I catch them taking nibbles from my garden. That is, until I realized I could create a deer-resistant garden that left nature safe and my garden intact.

We’d all love to imagine that pantry pests don’t exist. Spotless grocery stores and clean, sterile kitchens in advertisements make it easy to pretend for a while. But at home, no matter how hard we try, things creep in that we’d rather not have there—especially when we’re storing natural foods that aren’t heavily processed and packaged.

Love plants but hate bugs? Try planting these garden-friendly, bug-deterring plants to make your green patch healthy, blooming and bad-bug free...