Spring is so welcome after a snowy winter, but it can bring with it the unpleasant discovery that deer have been busy browsing your bushes.  Do not despair.  Deer may strip a shrub of almost all of the leaves, but the wood and roots can remain healthy.  What to do? 

• First, cut stems back to new buds to remove tattered ends and encourage growth from dormant buds lying beneath the bark. 

• Second, fertilize and water damaged plants during the coming growing season.  In spring apply a balanced (equal nitrogen-phosphorous-potassium) fertilizer following the package directions.  During the entire growing season water whenever the soil becomes dry at a depth of 4 to 6 inches.  Don’t over-water and don’t over-fertilize. 

• Third, protect your plants going into the winter.  Use an anti-dessicant spray to protect foliage from winter-burn and reevaluate your anti-deer measures.  Netting or fencing?  Repellents?  Think belt-and-suspenders.

Light browsing usually has little permanent effect; the plant will look fine at the end of the growing season.  Heavy browsing can permanently alter the shape of a plant and recovery can take two years or longer; but corrective pruning can create an equally beautiful specimen form.  Repeated heavy browsing can eventually kill a plant or deform it beyond usefulness; replace it with a less delicious plant.  But before you wrench that rhododendron out of the ground, remember you’re angry at the deer, not the plant -- give it a chance to show its mettle.