So you’ve just spent the day digging up your landscape in order to plant a magnificent spring bulb display, and followed it up with a well-deserved good night’s sleep.

The next morning you wake up to total garden chaos, with the freshly planted pansies laying on their sides – roots and all – half the tulips dug up and left on the surface, and all of the crocus corms mysteriously missing, as if abducted by aliens.

Congratulations, you’ve just provided a family of raccoons or a horde of voracious grey squirrels with some extracurricular activities.

In either case, you are going to have to be very proactive in order to prevent this from happening again.

My first run-in with grey squirrels happened more than 20 years ago while I was installing a major spring bulb display (about 5,000 bulbs) in West Vancouver.

We knew in advance that there was a squirrel problem, so we purchased several bags of peanuts in shells and dispersed them before we started to plant our display.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be little more than a delay tactic – as the squirrels quickly hoarded the gifted peanuts, then turned their attention to our minor bulbs.

They seemed to prefer the crocus and were courteous enough to allow us to plant them before they moved in for the kill. Of the 2,000 crocus corms we planted, a mere 200 showed up the following spring, and these displays were so sparse that we could hardly charge the customer for them.

What this taught me is that squirrels are inherently greedy and all tokens of good will are futile. Nothing but a barrier, live trap or repellent will keep them at bay.

A very simple barrier can be fashioned from an appropriately-sized piece of fine chicken wire or hardware cloth, fixed onto the soil surface (over the bulbs) using 4-5 inch long U-shaped pins, which are easily fashioned by cutting them from a few old wire coat hangers. You can cover these with a light coating of soil or bark mulch to make them more aesthetically pleasing, and they can be removed in several months time once the bulbs have rooted in.

Repellents often have mixed results, with some gardeners singing their praise and others considering them a waste of money. These are formulated from hot peppers (i.e. cayenne) that temporarily burn or irritate the nose and/or concentrated predator urine (i.e. coyote), which instinctively keeps them at bay.

Here, regular reapplication is important, particularly after heavy rains.

Live traps are your last option, and while I’ll be the first to admit that grey squirrels are little more than rats with fluffy tails, that is still no excuse for an inhumane extermination.

Live traps are easily located to active sites and no squirrel can resist a generous dab of peanut butter on a cracker used as bait – just be sure to centre it, because they can often reach it from the side without entering in.

Once trapped, they can be relocated miles away from your garden, perhaps near your in-laws’ house.

Often, a high grey squirrel population indicates poorly maintained local bird feeders, providing an unintentional source of food. If you do feed the birds, be sure to install a squirrel baffle on the feeder support posts, use squirrel-proof feeders (with weight indicators that close the feeding ports) and keep your feeders 10-15 feet away from trees or structures that squirrels can use as jumping points.

The telltale signs of raccoon damage include tulips and daffodils on the surface with an occasional bite mark and much deeper soil disturbance. Raccoons are actually highly attracted to the smell of bone meal used to provide phosphorus for root growth – and while they usually don’t take the bulbs away, they often dig them all up. Careful placement of the bone meal in the bottom of the hole or perhaps the omission of bone meal altogether at planting time may be the only solution here. Raccoons easily remove small wire barriers and they are wary of live traps; also, only the concentrated predator urine repellents seem to be effective.

Last on my list of bulb snatchers are deer, who enjoy nibbling on freshly sprouted tulips as much as I enjoy the pakuras from GM restaurant. Beyond a physical barrier (i.e. fencing), your best bet is a blood-based repellent – as deer are afraid of the smell. You can apply a granulated blood meal fertilizer as a surface application once the tulips have emerged or you can spray a stabilized product such as Plantskyyd, which lasts much longer.

Mike Lascelle is a local nursery

(hebe_acer@hotmail.com).