Hardware Cloth Tree Guards

What You're Up Against

• Voles do their damage in winter under the snow, where you can't see it. They tunnel through the snowpack and chew bark anywhere from the soil line right up to the snow line. You find it in spring, and by then the tree may be girdled. Out on the plains, prairie voles also eat roots underground, where a trunk guard can't help.
• Ground squirrels dig around the base, chew bark low on the trunk and go after roots. Their damage comes in spring and summer, since they hibernate through winter.
• Pocket gophers work underground and come at the roots from below and from the side. A tree that leafs out and then collapses in a few days usually has had its roots eaten. Give it a tug. If it rocks or lifts out, it's gophers. A tree girdled at the trunk often leafs out fine on stored energy and then fades over the summer.
• Rabbits and hares stand on the snow and can reach a foot and a half or more above it. The guard needs to stick up well past your deepest snow, and they can still nip low limbs and leaders above it.

That's why the guard has to go into the soil and come up well above your snow, not just sit on top of the ground.

Putting It On

Do it at planting, or at the latest in fall before the snow. Winter under the snow is when they girdle.

1. Pull the mulch back from the trunk.
2. Set the cylinder around the trunk, centered, so there's a gap all the way around. That gap keeps the wire from rubbing the bark and gives the trunk room to grow.
3. Really nudge the bottom edge down into the soil horizon, at least 2 to 3 inches deep all the way around. Most wildlife folks say to go about 6 inches, since voles will burrow under a shallow edge, so if your soil lets you, deeper is better, especially where ground squirrels dig. Work it down with your hands or a flat shovel. If there's a gap at the bottom, a vole will find it.
4. Pin it if you need to. In wind or loose soil, a short stake or landscape staple keeps it put.
5. Keep the ground around it clear, as below.

Clear the Ground Around the Trunk

The guard is the main thing, but voles want cover, and you can take it away from them.

• Keep grass, weeds and mulch pulled back a foot or more from the trunk. Voles hate crossing open ground, so a bare ring helps a lot. Once snow covers it they'll go anywhere, though, which is why the guard is what actually saves the tree. Piling mulch against the trunk is basically building them a house. A ring of coarse gravel around the trunk works well.
• Mow it short going into fall. Tall grass under snow is a vole highway.
• Clean up around the orchard. Fallen fruit, brush piles and tall cover next to the trees all raise the population.
• Watch for boom years. A bumper cone crop feeds the rodents, and the next year you've got mice everywhere. Voles boom on their own cycles too, often after a grassy fall and a long, deep-snow winter, so guard every year either way.
• Know the signs. Look for 1 to 2 inch runways in the grass and fresh clippings in fall. For a few trees, snap traps set across the runways work fine.
• Careful with bait. If you use it, keep it in tamper-proof bait stations or down in the burrows. Poisoned voles get eaten by owls, hawks and dogs.
• Raptor perches help some people, but I'd call that a bonus rather than a plan.

Pocket Gophers

A guard set into the soil stops gophers from working the trunk at the surface, but pocket gophers come from below and sideways. Where they're bad, protect the roots too: quarter inch hardware cloth, formed into a basket that the root ball sits in, with the top few inches sticking up above grade. Make it wide enough that the roots aren't cramped, and skip the chicken wire here too.

Don't use galvanized wire for a basket you're burying. Use plain, non-galvanized wire. It holds up long enough to get the tree established, then rusts away so it can't choke the roots of a tree that's going to live for decades. Galvanized can last long enough down there to crowd the roots as they grow.

Trap the gophers as well. The basket protects the roots, but it doesn't make the gophers go away.

Keeping It Working

• Check it in fall and again in spring. Look for gaps at the bottom, tunnels at the edge and chewing on the trunk.
• Check it after big snows too. After a big dump or drifting, make sure the snow hasn't buried the top or pushed the guard over, and tamp the snow down around it.
• Keep the inside clear of weeds, grass and mulch. They give voles cover.
• Give the trunk room as it grows. If the trunk gets close to the wire, open the seam and make the cylinder bigger so it never cuts in.
• Leave it on for years. Voles and gophers will go after an older tree too, so plenty of growers just keep the guards on and widen them as needed.

Pair It With White Paint

The wire stops teeth, not sun. Paint the trunk with white water-based latex first to prevent sunscald, let it dry, then put the guard on. For everything else in the first year, see our planting and care guide, and if deer come through your place, see our deer resistant plants.