Can Essential Oils Repel Deer? My Garden Experiment with Peppermint and Lavender
- Kathy Morelli
- Jun 28
- 4 min read
Originally published in 2014. Updated June 2026.
From The Healing Garden
This article is part of The Healing Garden, an ongoing series inspired by my woodland garden in northern New Jersey. Here I share observations about medicinal plants, pollinators, wildlife, mindfulness, and the simple joy of connecting with the natural world.
Every gardener in deer country knows the feeling. You walk outside one morning, only to discover that the deer have sampled your favorite lilies or coneflowers overnight!
Can Essential Oils Help Repel Deer?
I’m trying to protect my garden from becoming deer appetizers!
A seasoned gardener in deer country, protecting my garden from hungry deer has become part of my gardening routine.
Over the years I've tried commercial deer repellents, homemade recipes, and plenty of trial and error. This peppermint and lavender essential oil spray was one of my earliest experiments.
I’ve found that all are effective, all take persistence in remembering to take the time to re-apply during the season, all are kinda hard on the pocketbook plus I always had to make sure I had some on hand!
Because it just always seems that when my intuition was tingling and telling me it was time to re-apply, I just never had enough on hand to protect my whole garden. And I couldn’t seem to find time to run to get more of the stuff!
And yes, I said, intuition. I have somehow gotten on the energy circuit of my yard deer. I just feel it when they’re about to come back and sample my (their?) garden and find that the gosh darn stuff has worn off! And they just say yum yum, chomp chomp!
Now we all know that deer dislike plants with strong aromatic smells and tastes, like sage, peppermint and lavender.
Note from 2014:
And I’m smack in the middle of a Clinical Aromatherapy Certification Class at Liz Fulcher’s Aromatic Wisdom Institute in Pennsylvania.
I started wondering if I could make my own homemade deer repellent using highly aromatic essential oils!
I asked Mr. Google and found that some people had already had that idea!
Most of the recipes to repel deer asked for essential oils and eggs.
I thought, well, the deer won’t touch my peppermint and lavender. So why do we need eggs too?
And then I saw that Vitacost was having a sale on their own brand of peppermint and lavender oil. So I scored 4 oz bottles for $6.00 each!
These inexpensive essential oils were purchased for gardening purposes only. When using essential oils therapeutically with people, I recommend purchasing oils from companies that provide batch-specific GC/MS reports.
But these oil sare suitable for use in my deer repellant mix!
So here’s the recipe I used!
1 oz of peppermint oil
1 oz of lavender oil
4 ounces of jojoba oil (not organic – I figure I need to save the organic oils for myself and my clients!)
Fill the rest of the 40 ounce bottle with water!
Shake the bottle and spray!
I re-used an empty spray bottle from another natural product.
I sprayed my whole ornamental garden with this mixture last week before the heavy rains here in New Jersey (not the edible vegetable or herb plants).
The next day, I walked around the garden and noticed that the leaves had an oily residue on them, but they weren’t looking burned or unhealthy. So that was encouraging.
And now, a week later, even after that heavy downpour we had here, so far, the deer have stayed away!
But I’m getting that nagging intuition, it’s time to spray again!
I’ll let you know ! Stay tuned!
UPDATE: About then days after application, plus a heavy downpour, the plants that were sprayed weren’t touched! BUT, as my intuition told me, they came by and munched on the Mexican Sage (not yet in bloom – they bloom in September – October!) plants next to the black eyes susans! But in general they don’t like the Mexican Sage plants so there was just a small munching episode!
2018 Update
Alas, I have found that, as I have many fragrance allergies, that I am reacting to the spray when used on my garden and I cannot have the strong scent around me!
So I’m not able to use this solution to keeping the deer away!
I’ve resorted to using Liquid Fence which seems to work the most reliably! ’ve tried everything!! I also like Scram. But it’s harder to use as you are supposed to create a kind of barrier with the granules all around your garden area. Good luck! I
2026 Update
Yera later, I still rely primarily on Liquid Fence to protect my coneflowers and lilies. Living in northern New Jersey, I've learned that persistence matters more than finding the perfect product. I usually walk through the garden after dinner once or twice a week, checking my plants and reapplying when needed.
