Help, Bosley and Hannah love to dig. The problem is I just planted a beautiful flower garden only to go out the next morning to find them digging my flowers up. What can I do? I know digging is natural, but how do I keep them out of my flowers?
Oh your poor flowers,what a shame ,you won't want to hear this but I would say you can't! ....let me qualify that a bit,you could if you are out there supervising them all the time ,but that's probably not going to happen or ,if you are able to separate the planting area off ,maybe by fencing ? so many of us have had to rethink and redesign our outside areas due to the Labrador Breeds keen interest in gardening!
Oh dear! Maybe some temporary wire fencing will protect your flowers. Labs seem to have clashing ideas on garden design! Mine don't generally dig up plants (although I've been wondering why there's only one flower where I'm sure I planted twelve bulbs last autumn!) but Tuppence is an expert at re-arranging flower pots, so I have to make sure they're too heavy for her to move.
Fence off the garden temporary if you can like Granca said. Hopefully they will grow out of it. Fred was a digger when he was a pup, but not now he is fine. Annie doesn't dig, but will nip into the greenhouse and do a bit of her weeding, my tomatoes plants so have made a wire door to keep her out
I successfully trained Charlie to stay off my veg beds - but they are large, obvious things bordered with railway sleepers. It was quite straightforward though. I played find it games with treats (I did this a lot) and the treats were always on the gravel paths around the beds, never on the beds in the middle or at the sides. If he stepped on the beds or the side beds, I'd encourage him off and made sure he found a treat quickly on the paths. Really quite quickly, he twigged that on the paths was a great place to be, and on the beds a pointless place to be. But I don't think this would work if I just let him be unsupervised in the veg garden, out of boredom or whatever, he'd eventually start wandering over the beds. It works fine for a hour or so while I'm working out there though.
You may have to just hope that this is a "phase" that will pass. Pongo very briefly went through a digging phase, but after a few weeks got bored with it. It may be worse with two, if they egg each other on.... Can you aim to supervise / fence off at least temporarily and hope they grow out of it? Pongo still makes a major contribution to my gardening efforts, mainly involving sitting on my most delicate flowers. He also has an uncanny instinct for which piece of earth I want to weed / hoe / dig next, and deciding that there, and only there, in the place that he absolutely must lie down. I'm not sure that beautiful gardening and labradors are really compatible (unless you are Monty Don).... but they don't have to be complete disasters!
Their own poop in the holes they dug worked for me. They did just go dig a hole somewhere else and when they got to a spot in the yard I didn't care about I let them go to it. I can see how this might not be the best solution for your flowers, which I presume you cultivate around to fertilize and to weed. And not if they will just dig up different flowers. For some reason mine didn't dig the flowers (no hippy dogs here ) but one piece of cedar hedge nearly fell over before we discovered that hole.
When Molly was a puppy she started to dig at the base of the garden fence, so I sprinkled curry powder there, which deterred her.
The 2 labs I've had didn't start digging until they got bored . I'm not an expert here so take my post for what it's worth all I have is 16 years as a lab owner nothing more nothing less. Like I said my boys didn't dig unless they get bored . Do your dog's live outside? Or do you just put them outside part of the time . You could try to make the yard more dog friendly with toys etc to keep their attention somewhere else I doubt that'd would stop it though. I've seen sprays and I've used the spray to keep cats off things and it works for them ,never needed it for dogs though. You could try the spray barrier and see how that works if putting up some sort of barrier is not an option . Thing is labs can climb , so any barrier if they want in bad enough they'll get in .
One thing that might work is putting some chicken wire down on the ground around the flowers and fastening it down. It makes it physically impossible to dig and they lose interest. This works better if you put it down as the plants are coming up so that they grow between the wires but depending on your layout you might still be able to put it in between the plants.
If you have the room in your garden you could make a small sandpit where they are allowed to dig. if you hide things in there you can train them to keep their digging activities to that area.
Mine are supervised at all times in the garden and I have a place where the pups are allowed to dig (in the corner by the shed). But all my plants are in pots, so it's easy to keep them off.
@Boogie gorgeous pic of lovely dogs & beautiful garden ! @Snowshoe , I'm laughing here , how on earth did you come up with that plan ! Great job
Garden what garden, Charlie still has been known to remove plants from my pots and he is 5 years old x
Last year Baxter was just little and he destroyed all plants he could get to, we ended up putting all the planters together and made a barrier to keep him away from them. It didn't look very good and really was a waste planting them up. This year fingers crossed (this will be the kiss of death) he hasn't bothered at all, we're all planted up and so far he hasn't dug up anything. He has made a hole in one where he sniffs before peeing but that's another story
