When gardeners find their carefully tended plants wilted or uprooted, the immediate question is which animal caused the destruction. This disturbance is rarely accidental, as most wildlife that uproots plants is driven by a strong instinct to forage for food or secure resources. Identifying the specific pattern of damage is the first step in determining the culprit and the motivation behind the digging or pulling. The methods animals use—whether seeking a meal or a cached item—result in distinct visual clues for homeowners to follow.
Primary Culprits Seeking Subterranean Meals
A significant group of animals responsible for uprooting plants are those searching for food sources located just under the turf or soil. Raccoons and skunks are common examples, using their acute sense of smell to locate insect larvae like white grubs or earthworms. Raccoons often cause extensive damage by using their forepaws to lift and peel back sections of sod. This results in large, messy patches of exposed soil where the turf has been rolled back and scattered.
Skunks, by contrast, tend to be more surgical in their foraging technique, leaving behind numerous small, cone-shaped holes, typically one to three inches in diameter. They create these holes by pushing their snout into the soil to dig out individual grubs or other soil-dwelling insects. This pattern of small, precise divots indicates the animal is hunting for invertebrates near the surface.
Other subterranean feeders include gophers and voles, whose methods of uprooting differ because they live primarily underground. Gophers are notorious for pulling entire plants down into their tunnels from below, leaving behind a suddenly vanished plant with no obvious surface chewing. Their tunneling creates characteristic fan-shaped soil mounds with a plugged entrance hole off to one side. Voles, which are mouse-like rodents, create shallow, winding surface runways and gnaw on roots and bulbs just beneath the surface. A plant uprooted by a vole often shows signs of root damage or stem gnawing, causing it to wilt and be easily pulled out.
Animals Uprooting Plants for Other Reasons
Some animals disturb plants not for subterranean food, but due to surface activities like caching, browsing, or simple investigation. Squirrels are frequent culprits, often uprooting young seedlings or bulbs while burying or retrieving nuts. They prefer to dig in loose garden soil, and the action of checking a cache site can easily dislodge a newly planted flower or vegetable. The dislodged plant is frequently left wilted and tossed aside, indicating the squirrel was interested in the soil, not the plant itself.
Birds, such as crows and jays, can also pull out small plants or seedlings. They may be attempting to access recently sown seeds or investigating the root ball for small insects. This damage usually involves a clean pull, leaving the small plant intact on the soil surface near a shallow depression.
Larger herbivores like rabbits and deer can also cause uprooting, often as a secondary result of their feeding behavior. Rabbits tend to clip plants cleanly at ground level, but their grazing can sometimes tear out shallow-rooted plants. Deer lack upper incisors, so their browsing leaves a ragged, torn look on stems and branches. Their forceful pulling can easily dislodge plants. The damage from these animals is usually accompanied by chewed foliage and torn stems, differentiating it from the simple digging of subterranean feeders.
Targeted Strategies for Deterrence
Effective deterrence requires matching the strategy to the animal’s motivation for uprooting the plants. For animals like raccoons and skunks, the most effective long-term solution is habitat modification focused on removing their food source. This involves treating the lawn for a grub infestation, which eliminates the primary attractant that causes them to dig.
Physical exclusion is the most reliable method against most culprits, especially burrowing rodents and browsing animals. Installing underground barriers, such as hardware cloth or gopher wire beneath raised beds, prevents gophers and voles from accessing roots from below. For surface-active animals like deer and rabbits, a physical fence or individual protective caging around vulnerable plants is necessary to prevent them from reaching the foliage.
Repellents, which use scent or taste to discourage feeding, can offer temporary protection. Products containing capsaicin or predator urine scents can deter squirrels, rabbits, and deer from a specific area. Covering newly seeded or planted areas with mulch, netting, or coarse material can also discourage squirrels by making the soil less attractive for burying nuts.