Hateful Creature

Like many Middle Tennesseans, I have been under attack. Over the last year or so, voles have eaten their way through my garden, murdering about a dozen hostas, three nandinas, scads of vegetables, several red and blue lobelia, thirty or forty asiatic lilies, five balloon flowers (Platycodon), at least twenty square feet of Sweet Flag (Acorus gramineus), a Ward’s yew, a Peppermint Willow Tree (Agonis flexuosa), and probably more that I forgot I even had. In another post, I described my battle with these varmints, the various controls I tried in vain, and what finally worked for me.    

One of the most important steps I’ve taken is to choose plants that voles don’t consider delicacies. This is not a scientific study by any means–it is simply a list of what survived the Vole Onslaught of 2010 in the McPherson landscape. And it’s what I will be planting to replace everything the voles devoured.    

Even though the voles didn’t go after the types of plants listed below, they (or the moles or chipmunks) did tunnel underneath just about everything, which separated the roots from the soil and left big air pockets. I had to practice diligent vole patrol, which meant simply stepping on the raised mounds (and wishing like mad that I was squishing a vole mid-munch) or using my hands to firm the soil back down.    

And so here, without further ado–and in no particular order–are the types of plants that the voles have eschewed in my garden:    

Blue Lobelia

Ferns
Native, perennial, annual–all came through just fine. I was surprised that the little monsters didn’t dine on the asparagus fern roots, which are quite bulbous, but they left them alone.    

Herbs
So tasty to us; so distasteful to voles. Exception: Common chives (Allium schoenoprasum). Totally bewildering, since they turned up their snouts at my garlic chives and tunneled right past the scads of onion grass that heavily populates what passes for a lawn at my place. Which brings me to…    

Natives
Kinda bittersweet, because I could do with several hundred fewer violets, wild strawberries, red cedars, and honeysuckle vines, but whatever. The vast majority of native trees, shrubs, ephemeral wildflowers, and perennials suffered no damage in my garden, and I have no idea why. Voles in the wild have to eat something, right? It must be Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica), which is a shame, because I had a lovely drift of it, and it’s somewhat difficult to find these days.    

Salvia
I adore salvia–every last species of it. I suppose it could be included in herbs, but here I’m talking about the ornamental varieties–azurea, greggii, guaranitica, leucantha, microphylla, nemerosa–all of it. I love it because it blooms so profusely, even in our Saharan summers, and the bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds flock to it, but pest insects want nothing to do with it. And neither do the voles.    

Hellebores
They’re tough, they bloom in winter, they’re evergreen, they thrive in dry shade, and the voles (and deer and rabbits) scurry/walk/hop on by. What’s not to love?    

Ornamental Grasses
Another favorite. Four seasons of interest, and they add grace and movement to the garden. Exception: Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), which I suppose isn’t technically a grass, being in the iris family, but that’s how I use it, so that’s what I call it. And the weird thing is that the voles didn’t really eradicate it, they just moved it around. Some clumps disappeared, and new ones emerged at the complete opposite end of the garden. I suppose the birds could’ve had a hand in redesigning my garden, but at this point, I’m blaming every bad thing that happens in my life on the voles.    

Coleus
I don’t plant a lot of annuals. I love them–I just don’t have the space these days. But I always manage to squeeze in some Coleus. And the new sun varieties perform equally well in sun or shade. You’d think that, as thirsty as they are, their roots would be especially moist and tempting during the dry summer months, but either the voles don’t know what a Coleus is, or it just tastes bad to them. Either way, yay for me!    

Vines and Groundcovers
This category crosses over somewhat into natives and ferns, but not one of my many, many vines and groundcovers succumbed to the voles. Besides, they’re ridiculously easy.    

A Very Few Select Bulbs and Rhizomatous Perennials: Daffodils, Elephant Ears, and Irises
We all know that daffodils are critter-proof, but elephant ears, with their big fat juicy bulbs? The bulbs many people of the world mash and eat as Taro? Well, it turns out that Taro is toxic when eaten raw (it causes kidney stones), and apparently the voles know this. Bummer, because I would happily sacrifice my elephant ears if it meant painful urinary issues for voles. But I plant elephant ears by the truckload, and they not only survived, they multiplied. Same with my Bearded Irises. You just can’t kill ‘em.    

I’m sure I’m forgetting something, and that’s why I’d love to hear which plants the voles ignore at your place.  Maybe if we all pull together, we can wipe these beady-eyed beasties off the face of the earth run these rodents out of town.