Will Goats Eat My Landscaping? How We Keep the Garden Out of the Grazing Area

A goat will eat a prized rose with the same enthusiasm it brings to a bramble. It has no way to know that one is a weed and the other cost you forty dollars. So the question is not whether goats will eat your landscaping. They will. The question is whether they can reach it, and that is a fencing question.

Where the fence goes

Professional grazing uses temporary electric netting, moved in sections as the herd works through an area. Before the herd arrives, the herder and the owner walk the property and agree on two things: where the grazing area starts and stops, and which plants inside it are off limits.

The easy case is a property where the landscaping is clearly separate from the area to be cleared. A fence line goes between them and that is the end of it. The harder case is where the garden and the brush run together, such as an overgrown slope with a few established shrubs growing through it. There the herder can fence off individual plants or small groups.

What to tell us

• Plants you want kept. Put a flag or a ribbon on them, or send photos with notes. A tied ribbon beats a verbal description every time.
• Plants that are valuable even if they look scruffy. Native shrubs, old roses and anything with sentimental history.
• Irrigation and drip lines. Goats will chew exposed tubing. We cover this in what to flag before the goats arrive.

Plants goats like that you might not expect

Roses, including wild roses, young fruit trees, ivy, wisteria and honeysuckle all go quickly. Those are often the things you want gone from a neglected area, which is why goats work so well there. They are also the things people plant on purpose, which is why the conversation about boundaries matters.

What about the plants that are bad for them?

Some common landscaping plants are toxic to goats, including oleander, rhododendron and azalea. The herder will fence those off for the animals' sake. See plants that are poisonous to goats. Fencing them off protects both the goats and the plants.

A practical suggestion

If your property mixes cultivated and wild areas, decide before the visit which parts you would rather do yourself. Hand-weeding a flower bed is better than any amount of fencing around it. Goats are for the big, ugly, overgrown parts. They are a poor fit for a garden.