Is Lily of the Valley Deer Resistant?

Updated September 2026 · Garden Advice Guide

Yes. Lily of the valley deer resistant ratings put it in the top tier, the one labeled "rarely damaged," right next to daffodils and ferns. Every part of the plant carries cardiac glycosides, which are bitter and genuinely poisonous, so a deer that tries one mouthful learns the lesson fast and routes around the patch for good. In a normal season an established colony goes from first shoot to fall dormancy without a single bite taken out of it.

Make sure it will actually survive your winters and summers first. Find your USDA zone free with our growing zone lookup, then check it against the zone notes below.

Updated September 2026

Here's the real problem this page solves. Shade beds in deer country are brutal. Hosta gets mowed to stubs overnight, impatiens vanish, and the standard advice is a monotonous carpet of pachysandra. Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) breaks that pattern: 6 to 12 inches of clean upright foliage, a few weeks of white bells in spring that smell better than anything else in the yard, and near total immunity from browsing. It also has two real drawbacks that most plant tags never mention, and you should know both before you buy a single pip.

Why Deer Walk Past Lily of the Valley

Deer are selective browsers with long memories. They sample, learn, and then avoid. Lily of the valley gives them three separate reasons to keep walking.

1. Cardiac glycosides in every part of the plant. Convallatoxin, convallarin, and convallamarin are concentrated in the leaves, stems, flowers, roots, and the orange-red berries that form in late summer. These are the same class of compounds found in foxglove, and they affect heart rhythm in mammals. A deer does not have to know the chemistry. It gets an immediately bitter, mouth-irritating bite and drops the plant.

2. No sugar and no water reward. Deer favor soft, thin-walled, high-moisture leaves, which is exactly why hosta, daylily, and tulip get destroyed. Lily of the valley leaves are firm, ribbed, and slightly waxy. Even without the toxins, there is not much of a meal in them.

3. Berries that nothing wants. The fruit that follows the flowers looks tempting and is not. Deer, rabbits, and most birds leave it alone, which is also why the plant spreads mainly by root rather than by seed.

Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station publishes Landscape Plants Rated by Deer Resistance, which is the rating system most nursery tags quietly borrow from. Its top grade reads "rarely damaged," not "never damaged," and that wording is on purpose. No plant on earth is deer proof. In a hard winter with deep snow and no browse left, a starving deer will test almost anything once. Lily of the valley simply sits at the very back of that line.

Compare that against the plants deer actively hunt for, which we cover in our roundup of plants deer love. The pattern holds every time: soft and sweet gets eaten, bitter and toxic and fibrous gets skipped.

Is Lily of the Valley Deer Resistant in Every Season?

Yes, and this plant is unusually consistent across the year, which is not true of most so-called deer resistant perennials.

That last row matters more than people expect. A lot of plants sold as deer resistant are evergreen, which means they are the only green thing available in February and get browsed anyway out of pure desperation. Lily of the valley is herbaceous. By late fall it has melted away completely, so there is nothing above ground for a hungry deer to find in the worst month of the year.

The one narrow risk window is the emerging shoot stage in April, and even that is minor here compared to a plant like Solomon seal. If you garden under extreme deer pressure and want to be careful, spray a repellent on the new shoots twice, two weeks apart, starting the day you see them. Rotate between two different repellent types, since deer habituate to a single scent within a season.

How It Stacks Up Against Other Shade Ground Covers

If you are choosing a shade carpet for deer country, these are the realistic options and how they differ.

Our full deer resistant ground cover guide compares all of these side by side, including the sun-loving options. The short version: lily of the valley wins on fragrance and on cold hardiness, ties on deer resistance, and loses on manners. It is the most aggressive spreader in that table.

For taller companions in the same bed, our deer resistant shade plants list covers what to plant behind it so the bed does not read as one flat green mat.

Zones, Light, and Soil

Lily of the valley is happiest in zones 2 through 7. That cold tolerance is remarkable, and it is the reason the plant shows up in old farmhouse gardens across the northern tier of the country.

Zones 2 to 4: thrives, and the cold is never the limit. Give it part shade and it will run.

Zones 5 to 6: the sweet spot. Full shade to part shade, moist soil, and it fills in fast.

Zone 7: workable, but keep it in real shade and out of afternoon sun. Foliage browns early in hot summers.

Zone 8 and warmer: generally a fail. The plant needs a cold dormant period and it declines after a season or two. Pick something else.

Light: full shade to part shade. It tolerates a couple of hours of morning sun and resents afternoon sun anywhere south of zone 6.

Soil: moist, rich, organic, slightly acidic to neutral. It tolerates dry shade far better than most people expect once the colony is established, though the leaves brown at the tips in a real drought.

Bloom time runs April into May depending on your zone, with the flowers lasting about three weeks. The fragrance is the main event and it carries surprisingly far on a still evening.

How to Plant It, and How Many You Need

Lily of the valley is sold as "pips," which are the individual dormant crowns with a bit of rhizome attached. Plant them in fall or very early spring.

1. Loosen the top 8 inches of soil and work in 2 inches of compost. The roots run shallow, so deep digging is unnecessary.
2. Set each pip 1 to 1.5 inches deep, pointed tip up, with the growing tip just below the soil surface.
3. Space them 4 to 6 inches apart for a fast fill, or 8 to 12 inches apart if you are patient and want to start with fewer pips.
4. Water in once, deeply. Then keep the bed evenly moist through the first season.
5. Mulch with 1 to 2 inches of shredded leaves. Skip the heavy bark mulch, which mats over the shallow crowns.
6. Leave it alone for a year. First season growth looks thin. Second season it doubles. Third season you have a carpet.

A worked example

Say you have a 4 foot by 10 foot strip along a north-facing foundation. That is 40 square feet. Spacing decides both your order size and how long you wait.

The math is 144 divided by the spacing squared. At 8-inch spacing that is 144 divided by 64, which is 2.25 pips per square foot, so 40 square feet times 2.25 gives you 90 pips. Most gardeners land on the middle row. Lily of the valley spreads roughly 6 to 12 inches a year once it settles in, so the tightest spacing usually just buys you one season.

If you want the arithmetic done for you across a whole bed, our plant spacing calculator handles any spacing and bed size.

The Two Honest Downsides

This is where most articles go quiet, so here is the straight version.

It spreads, and it does not stop. The rhizomes run in the top 2 to 4 inches of soil and push outward every year. In a bed with a solid edge it is a gift. In an open woodland edge it becomes a monoculture that pushes out native wildflowers and tree seedlings. It is listed as an invasive or watch-list species in a number of northeastern and midwestern states, so check your own state's list before planting near woods.

To contain it, sink a physical barrier 10 to 12 inches deep around the planting. Standard 4-inch landscape edging does not work because the roots walk right under it. A driveway, a foundation wall, or a mowed lawn edge all hold it well. A mulched bed that runs into a woodlot does not.

If containment is not realistic in your yard, look at the slower-spreading options in the table above. Epimedium and Christmas fern give you similar deer resistance in dry shade with none of the running.

It is genuinely toxic. Not "mildly upsetting," actually toxic, which is the reverse of the reputation stuck to the holiday plant everyone warns you about. All parts, including the berries and the water in a vase of cut stems, contain cardiac glycosides. Keep it out of beds that toddlers crawl through and out of yards where a dog chews on plants. The berries are the specific hazard because they are bright and look edible. This is the same reason the plant works against deer, so you cannot have one without the other.

What Else Bothers It

Deer are the headline, but they are not the only animal in the yard.

Rabbits: they skip it for the same reason deer do. Reliable pass.

Voles: the exception. Voles will chew rhizomes under snow cover in a bad year. Avoid piling deep, loose mulch directly over the crowns if you have vole problems, and keep the winter mulch layer thin.

Slugs and snails: they will chew ragged holes in the leaves in a wet spring, especially in dense shade. Not fatal, mostly cosmetic.

Squirrels and chipmunks: no interest. That is a real advantage over bulbs, since our deer resistant bulbs guide is full of species that deer ignore but rodents dig up anyway.

Designing the Bed So It Doesn't Look Flat

A solid sheet of lily of the valley is pretty for three weeks and dull for five months. Two fixes.

Layer height above it. Solomon seal is the natural partner, since it also rates in the rarely damaged tier and gives you 2 to 4 feet of arching vertical line above the carpet. Our guide on whether Solomon seal is deer resistant covers the species differences. Hellebore, Christmas fern, and bergenia all work at the middle height.

Interrupt the carpet. Run a path of stepping stones through it, or break the mass with a clump of variegated foliage. The foliage of lily of the valley reads as one texture, so contrast has to come from a neighbor plant.

For the wider list of perennials that hold up under browsing pressure, see our deer resistant perennials roundup.

FAQ

Do deer eat lily of the valley?

Almost never. It rates in the "rarely damaged" tier because every part of the plant contains cardiac glycosides that are bitter and toxic. In an extreme winter with no other browse available, a starving deer may sample it once, but it will not come back. There is no plant that is fully deer proof.

Is lily of the valley deer resistant enough to plant without a fence?

Yes, for this plant specifically. It is one of the few shade ground covers you can put in an unfenced bed in heavy deer country and reasonably expect to find intact each summer. If you want extra insurance during the first spring, spray a repellent on the emerging shoots twice, two weeks apart.

Will rabbits eat it if deer won't?

No. Rabbits avoid it for the same chemical reason. Voles are the animal to watch, since they can chew the rhizomes under winter snow. Keep winter mulch thin over the crowns and you rarely have trouble.

Is lily of the valley invasive?

In many northeastern and midwestern states, yes, it is on an invasive or watch list. The rhizomes run in the top few inches of soil and it forms dense colonies that crowd out native woodland plants. Plant it inside a hard edge like a driveway, foundation, or mowed lawn, or sink a barrier 10 to 12 inches deep, and never plant it at a woodland edge.

Is it toxic to dogs and children?

Yes, all parts of it, including the berries and even the vase water from cut stems. The compounds affect heart rhythm. Do not plant it where a young child plays or where a dog chews on foliage. This toxicity is exactly what makes it deer resistant, so there is no low-toxicity version of this plant.

What zone does lily of the valley grow in?

Zones 2 through 7. It is extremely cold hardy and it fails in hot climates because it needs a real winter dormancy. In zone 7 keep it in full shade. In zone 8 and warmer, choose a different ground cover.

How long does it take to fill in?

At 8-inch spacing, expect thin coverage the first year, noticeable filling the second, and a closed carpet by the third. It spreads roughly 6 to 12 inches a year once established, so the planting will keep expanding past your original outline unless you edge it.

When should I plant the pips?

Fall is best, so the rhizomes settle before the ground freezes. Very early spring, as soon as the soil can be worked, is the second choice. Avoid summer planting, since the shallow roots dry out before they establish.