Keeping Chickens in the Garden? What can you Plant that the chickens won't eat?

Chickens will of course scratch around and eat many plants in the garden, including tender vegetable and fruit crops that you have to fence off. If you're looking to put some plants in your garden that the chickens won't touch, have a look at this list:

These plants are what we've found from experience that chickens do not touch. If you have any others to add to it, please contact us and let us know so that we can include them here.

Rose of Sharon Most shrubs and bushes Blackcurrants Rosemary Lavender Hardy Geraniums Hardy Fuschias Foxgloves Primroses Pelargoniums Oriental Grasses & Bamboos Clematis Roses Honeysuckle Perennial Sweetpeas Wormwood Petunias Ophiopogan planiscapus ' Nigrescens'(Black lilyturf) Purple Fringed Loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) 'Purpurea' Some may eat: Pyrethrum Daisies Lillies

Every plant that grows up above chicken head height seems to work, especially if under planted by lavenders or similar. Give climbers protection at first but once established, they are fine. Chickens do scratch around and disturb the soil, but they also keep the insects down and manure as they go! Pyrethrum daisies work well, but tend to spread everywhere. Pyrethrum and Wormwood are great to grow around the yard, as they repel insects.

In the vegetable plot:

Garlic, Onions Leeks (see right!) Potatoes, Squashes Legumes, Chives Mint, Tarragon, Sage Rhubarb (they will occasionally eat the young leaves but don't seem to go ill) Parsley,Cougettes Climbing beans once established Current Bushes (without fruit) Asparagus (once in leaf)