Cats can be an annoying presence in flower gardens, using the soil as their toilet. Finding cat feces and urine among your blooms can be disheartening.
But there are effective methods available for keeping cats away from your flower garden without resorting to harsh measures or traps. Simply employ multiple strategies.
Tape
Tape is an inexpensive and nontoxic solution to keeping cats away from your flower garden. Simply shape rolls of masking or duct tape into balls, placing them around any corners your cat uses to gain entry and exit from the flowers. As your cat jumps up onto it, the tape will adhere itself to its fur, discouraging further visits from this pest.
Cats often avoid flower beds when possible, and objects with unpleasant aromas may help keep them away. Unfortunately, these smells must be regularly renewed, and don’t always prevent cats from entering this space.
Another effective solution to keep cats away is by placing chicken wire or mats strategically around your flower gardens. These will prevent cats from digging up the soil while discouraging any digging holes they might attempt to dig themselves.
Stakes
Cats are naturally curious animals, making the garden an alluring target. From your own to stray cats, their curiosity may leave a trail of destruction that damages flowers and plants in your flowerbeds. You can discourage cats from visiting by providing barriers like high fences, prickly shrubs and densely planted areas that make access difficult.
Simple yet effective techniques include using metal or wooden sticks a few feet above the ground to block access for cats without them climbing over them. Wind chimes or sprinklers activated by motion can also provide effective deterrence measures.
Planting Coleus Caninus, which reportedly smells of cat urine and deters cats from entering your flower garden, may also help. This is one way of deterring them.
Water
One effective strategy to keep cats out of flower beds is making the environment unpleasant for them. This could involve covering it with mesh cloth that has been tucked and staked down, or using wire netting made of chicken wire to cover it all over. Or alternatively, try installing a cat fence which features slats that prevent cats from climbing over and prevents digging!
Spray your area with commercial deterrents designed to smell bad to cats, such as hot pepper spray. Additionally, cat-repelling plants like rue, lavender, lemon thyme, pennyroyal and geraniums may help or spread prickly materials like pine cones over the soil surface as a deterrent against digging and lounging in that spot.
Hot Pepper Spray
Cats can be helpful in gardens by chasing away rodents, yet they can also damage blooms by digging and leaving unintended deposits, using plants as napping spots, and digging holes through them to bury themselves underground. There are humane ways of discouraging cats from flower gardens without causing harm, pain, injury or distress to any animal involved.
Planting a border of flowers that have proven effective at deterring cats works effectively. Such flowers emit scents that are offensive to felines and include mint, lavender, rosemary, rue, eucalyptus capsaicin and certain fresh herbs.
Scarecrows can be effective visual deterrents for cats, particularly when filled with scents that they find distasteful – like mothballs and aromatic herbs. A motion-activated sprinkler may also work; cats dislike being exposed to water when entering gardens.
Chicken Wire
Cats can be useful in the garden by protecting against other pests, but they can also wreak havoc by digging up flower beds and leaving deposits behind, spraying their territory, eating flowers – such as azaleas and nicotiana which can be toxic – chewing on them or eating them entirely!
Chicken wire can help keep cats away from your flower garden by edging the soil or placing it atop a fence. The texture of the wire makes walking on it unpleasant for cats’ paws and makes climbing difficult for them.
Other cat deterrents include rosemary, thyme, lavender, rue and pennyroyal plants that give off an unpleasant odor that deters cats. Coleus caninus (commonly referred to as Scaredy Cat Plant) has also proven useful at keeping cats out of gardens.