Garden Plants That Repel Ticks

By Linda Cole

Garden plants are a safe and natural way to control fleas and mosquitoes, but they can also be used to help repel ticks and keep tick carrying animals, like deer, out of your yard. I’d like to thank Frankie Furter, a very handsome black and tan dog, for inspiring this post. When I wrote my article on Garden Plants that Repel Fleas, Frankie asked if there were any plants that could help repel ticks. This article is especially for you, Frankie! I hope it gives you some ideas to help keep those nasty ticks out of your yard and your fur.

There hasn’t been a lot of research done on ticks and garden plants, which is odd considering how much harm ticks can cause not only pets, but people too. Wild animals, especially deer, can carry ticks into your yard when they visit a garden for plants they are attracted to. Ticks can also be carried in the wind from a nearby grassy or wooded area, and they love moist and humid places. Finding just one tick, even on your pet, can give you that creepy feeling that something is crawling up your leg, into your hair.

Lavender

There are many varieties of lavender. It’s a perennial with a very nice smell that most people are familiar with. But as beautiful as this flower is, ticks, moths, mice, the pesky black fly, mosquitoes and fleas can all do without it.

Lemongrass

Lemongrass is believed to be a plant that repels ticks. It’s a good companion plant with lavender. You can eat lemongrass, and it’s a popular ingredient in Vietnamese and Thai dishes. It does have a lemon smell, but depending on who you ask, the taste is a light hint of ginger for some or a mild lemon taste for others. It grows best in the southern U.S.; it can be grown up north, but will need to be taken inside during the winter.

Geranium

Caution: All parts of this plant are toxic to dogs and cats. So if you have outside cats or have other cats that wander in your yard, it’s best to not plant geraniums. Most dogs and cats will instinctively avoid plants that are toxic to them, but not all of them do. If you have a safe spot in your garden for geraniums, they are said to repel ticks. To help keep cats out of your garden, especially if you have plants that are toxic to them, you can plant rue. It’s also a garden plant that repels fleas.

Members of the mint family

Catnip, sage and mints are all thought to help repel ticks from yards. The nice thing about catnip and all mints, like peppermint, chocolate mint or apple mint, is that they are perfectly safe to use around pets. They can be dried and spread in your pets’ bedding and around the house to help drive ticks and fleas out. If your pet eats part of the plant, it won’t hurt them. Just remember, mints are invasive and will wander all over the yard if they aren’t planted in pots, and you need to keep different varieties away from each other to keep them from cross pollinating.

Tips to help keep ticks out of your yard

Ticks like to hide in tall grass, so keeping your lawn mowed and tall grasses cut down around the areas where you and your pet like to hang out will help take away a tick’s hiding spot. Creating a path of cedar chips around areas where your pet spends most of their time will stop ticks from getting in that area. Cedar chips are also good for repelling fleas, but they are toxic to pets, so if you use them, monitor your pet to make sure they aren’t eating any chips. Planting catnip along the border of a cedar chip path is a perfect place for this plant, because it keeps it away from other garden plants that could be damaged if a cat decides to roll in the catnip. Lemongrass or any other of the above plants are also good border plants.

How to keep deer out of your yard

Not everyone wants a 10 foot fence around their yard just to keep deer out. However, planting the right plants in the right places can help keep deer at bay. They find their favorite food by smell, but you can place garden plants around the perimeter of your yard to help keep deer out. Good plants to use that repel deer include different varieties of sage, yarrow, oregano, lemon balm and black-eyed Susan. These plants have a strong odor that deer don’t like, and they cover up the smell of garden plants deer like to eat. If they can’t smell what they’re looking for, deer will most likely avoid your yard. Keeping them out of your yard can help keep ticks out as well.

Photo: Audrey in the Garden, by Tapir Girl

Read more articles by Linda Cole

Garden Pests: Tackling Ticks with Natural, Dog-Friendly Sprays

 
Whether you’re talking about the tiny black deer ticks, Ixodes scapularis, or the larger brown wood or dog ticks, Dermacentor variabilis, ticks are more than just a gardening nuisance. Carriers of tick born illnesses such as Lyme Disease, several relapsing fevers, ehrlichiosis, and tularemia to name but a few, they are a significant health hazard to both people and pets.

Where we live in coastal Massachusetts, ticks are a particularly serious problem. And even though the diseases caused by ticks are serious, the problems associated with tick repellants are equally problematic, never mind the fact that they aren’t completely effective in any event.

Emily was successfully treated for Lyme disease.

Most chemical tick control agents (such as Biospot or Frontline), do little or nothing to actually repel a tick from climbing onto your dog and nothing for the ticks that you carry in yourself on your clothing. They kill ticks that climb onto your dog but that can take up to 48 hours. Even utilizing one of those products, we found ourselves removing several ticks a day from each dog, and it wasn’t unusual for a tick to fall off the dog onto us or our bed.

With one dog already having had a bout of Lyme Disease, we are quite aggressive in the treatment of our pets and yard for ticks. Most “natural” repellants that are commercially available consist of essential oils in an oily or watery base. I find that witch hazel makes a very nice base for these kinds of mixtures; there is no oil to stain clothing and it dries nicely on the dogs as well as us.

My recipe is simple: In a clean spray bottle, combine one bottle (16 ounces) witch hazel and one small bottle (about 15 ml) of each of the following essential oils: oil of eucalyptus, oil of lemon grass, and oil of rose geranium. The oils will float on top of the witch hazel so shake the bottle gently to mix before spraying.

I spray the dogs with special attention to their legs, tails, bellies, chest, and under their chin twice a week and that goes a long way toward preventing ticks from hitchhiking into the house in their fur. We still check them carefully twice daily, but the number of ticks we’re finding has been reduced to one or two a week on all of the dogs, down from 3-4 daily on each dog.

I also recently obtained a homeopathic tick repellant from our holistic vet that is added to the dog’s water every time you change the water in the bowl. Since we have been somewhat inconsistent about using it every time we change water (we have several water bowls, several people changing the water, and I keep the drops in the kitchen so they are often overlooked), I can’t verify that it has made a substantial difference, but I have to acknowledge that it also may be playing a role as a tick repellant as well.

We also add oil of rose geranium to our general garden spray at least once a month. That, along with home made garlic oil, helps control the number of ticks and fleas in the environment; we have yet to have any issues at all with fleas and we do notice a dramatic decrease in the number of ticks we observe on our dogs, on us, and in our home when we spray on a regular basis. You can find our entire protocol here.

But ticks still manage to find their way into the house. We check the dogs daily for stowaways and we check ourselves when we come in from gardening. Light colored clothing makes them easier to spot but not infrequently we will spy one crawling on the furniture or floor, most definitely having traveled indoors on our clothing.

A handy way to quickly trap and permanently secure them when you spot them crawling on clothing, furniture or the floor is with adhesive tape. They readily adhere to the tape and when you fold the tape over on itself, they are permanently imprisoned and can be tossed into the regular trash.

Stuck to the tape, the tip can’t extricate itself from the adhesive.

Fold the tape over on itself and dispose of the tick in the trash.

It’s a quick, hands off way to quickly trap and dispose of a tick permanently.

For ticks that attach themselves to the dogs, we keep a small jar with several ounces of cooking oil and a pair of heavy large tweezers handy. After removing the tick, they are dropped into the oil where they smother. Every few weeks, the jar is disposed of in the trash and a “new” jar prepared.