Fencing designed to keep cats out of flower beds is one option for deterring domestic or feral cats from your garden, while spraying a cat with water may also work effectively as a deterrent.
Planting thorny plants like pyracantha, rue and holly is an effective way to deter cats from your flower garden. Other cat-deterring options include catnip, lavender and lemon thyme.
Physical Barriers
After years of hard work in your garden, the last thing you want is to spend your weekends picking up cat poop and urine from your flowers and vegetables. Physical barriers may help deter cats and protect your plants.
Place thorny bushes such as blackberry, hawthorn and holly in your garden to create an uncomfortable barrier for cats to walk upon. Cover soil with thorny branches or cover it with layers of holly cuttings, pine cones or eggshells so it becomes harder for cats to traverse.
Certain plants such as coleus canina (the Scaredy Cat Plant), yarrow and rue release scents that repel cats. Orange and lemon peels, coffee grounds, mothballs pipe tobacco and eucalyptus oil may also serve as effective deterrents; while high-pitched noise-making devices can also work to drive away cats.
Electric Fence
Cats can be quite destructive in the garden, digging up flowerbeds and digging for prey. Additionally, they leave deposits behind or use plants as soft napping spots – all things which require humane measures to keep away. Luckily there are ways you can safely keep cats away from your flower gardens!
An electric fence can help prevent cats from accessing your gardens. Consisting of a bare wire connected to an electrical pulse generator that emits electrical pulses about every 10 seconds, an animal touching both components at the same time will complete an electrical circuit and be shocked briefly – although not permanently or debilitatingly; smaller dogs seem less affected than cats by such shocks.
Grow prickly plant varieties that cats find distasteful. Holly leaves, pyracantha or perennial geraniums have spikes that may hurt cats if stepped on by cats.
Scents
Cats can wreak havoc on flowerbeds by excavating plants and using the area as their personal litter box, as well as digging up flowers to use as litter and pooping in them. Furthermore, cats may trample flowers while chewing leaves, stems and trunks causing permanent damage to them.
Cats find certain aromas distasteful, providing a natural deterrent against them entering your garden. Some examples include lavender, rosemary, the scaredy cat plant (Coleus canina) and citronella as effective deterrents.
Orange peels can also help repel cats, and are easy to add to flowerbeds and problem areas in the garden. Plants that produce fragrant scents are also effective, including rue and marigolds which produce pleasant fragrances while simultaneously deterring mosquitoes – they come as annual or perennial options to suit most climates.
Water
Cats tend to avoid water sources such as sprinkler systems that activate when motion is detected in your flower garden. Not only will this be an effective deterrent against cats but it’s also an efficient and affordable way to water plants and flower beds so it should certainly be considered when trying to keep cats out of one section of your yard.
Citrus peels, herbs such as rue or lemon thyme (which can be planted live), coffee grounds, cayenne pepper and pipe tobacco have been said to repel cats from gardens and flower beds. Sprinkle the dried leaves of these plants around areas you wish to protect, or try filling jars with ammonia liquid and burying it in your flower garden as an effective deterrent.
Tape
Cats can be an enormously disruptive presence in a garden, digging up freshly planted seeds beds and defecating on flower plants. Furthermore, cats spread diseases such as histoplasmosis, leptospirosis, ringworm, plague and rabies when they defecate or urinate on garden soil.
Some gardeners use duct tape to block off areas they wish to protect from cats – an easy, cost-effective and non-detrimental way to do it without harming the garden itself.
An easy way to keep cats out of flower gardens is to cover the ground with coarse material like pebbles or stones – cats don’t like walking on rough surfaces and this could deter them from entering flower beds. A layer of fine-grained sand may also deter cats from entering your flowerbeds.