There are tons of deer here because across the street from me is a mountain and only 2 properties on it, but I have a completely fenced in yard, and have NEVER seen one get inside. Squirrels tend to stay out of the yard because of the cats. AND I have a little chicken wire fence around the garden also to keep MY pets out of it . They didn't chew the whole tops off , just stripped some leaves which leads me to think caterpillars. I'll have to take pics tomorrow, it's raining now.
This is the main tomato garden that I slaved over to build this Spring and toil and sweat weekly to make it look this good
I'm pretty proud of it! Not done with the finishing touches around the edges, but if you look really closely you can sort of make out the lake in the distance and see how high up this part of my property is from the lake...so no worries about the muskrat up here.
The only thing I don't like is that my neighbors who have no yard at all (their house has 10' on my side to the property line and 12' on their other side) practically sit on top of me there. Next year I plan to cut those huge overgown evergreen trees down (they are shading part of my garden) and replace them with something else that will cover the fence and give me privacy from the neighbors. They are okay, but putting the house up for sale soon, and who knows what I'll be dealing with next neighbor.
So this is the side yard garden, and there's the road garden, and the lake garden, and the old garden. All in all, I was able to squeeze about 51 plants in the yard here and there