Cottage Q&A
QUESTION
Over winter, deer ate the needles off our hemlock and cedar trees. The lower branches are totally stripped of
needles. Will the needles come back? Or should I trim off all these branches?
Sally Roper, Lake Muskoka, Ont.
ANSWER
Sorry, the foliage won’t likely come back once your deer visitors have stripped it away, says King Wright, a professional forester and owner of King’s Forestry Service in Port Carling, Ont. Wright suggests you look in mid- to late June to see if any buds survived; if you don’t see any new growth, you can go ahead and prune. Trim branches as close to the tree trunk as possible without cutting into the branch collar, which is the thick part of the branch closest to the trunk. This ensures the tree will heal over quickly, Wright says. And expect that the deer will be back to dine next season. There’s nothing a deer likes better on a cold winter’s day than lunch in a hemlock or cedar grove, where the tree branches offer protection from the elements and a sheltered spot without much snow. Other food on the winter menu includes yellow birch, beaked hazel, dogwood, and maples, says Jan McDonnell, area wildlife biologist for the Ministry of Natural Resources in Bracebridge, Ont. But these deciduous trees aren’t as popular because they don’t provide deer the same shelter from the weather. If you’d like to plant more conifers that deer won’t eat as readily, then consider red and white pine, and black and white spruce, which they don’t fancy as much.
Christine Langlois
* Published in the April 2008 issue of Cottage Life
