50+ Great Gopher Resistant Plants for California & Beyond
Last Updated on August 10, 2023
Do you live in gopher country? I feel your pain! Gophers are a giant nuisance here on the Central Coast of California. Without cages, they’ll eat and destroy everything we plant in the ground. Well, just about everything… Thankfully, there are a number of plants that gophers don’t like to eat. Read along for a list of over 50 awesome gopher-resistant plants for your landscape. As an added bonus, many of them happen to be drought-tolerant and California natives!
I’ve broken this article down into a complete list of all gopher resistant plants, as well as separate lists of gopher resistant California native plants and fruit trees/shrubs for easy reference. But first, let’s briefly familiarize ourselves with gophers, a few disclaimers, and non-toxic gopher control methods like gopher cages.
About Gophers
Gophers, also known as pocket gophers, are burrowing rodents native to North and Central America. There are over 30 different gopher species, and are mostly found in the western half of the United States as well as Florida.
Gophers are known for their uncanny ability to destroy gardens, farms, and ornamental landscaping. They create vast networks of subterranean tunnels, and leave telltale mounds and holes at the soil surface. Gophers primarily eat plant roots, tubers, and bulbs, which can easily stunt or kill plants. They often pull entire plants underground! Our veggies wouldn’t stand a chance if they weren’t planted in raised garden beds with hardware cloth below. Learn how to build gopher-proof raised garden beds here.
Gophers are much larger than voles and moles, and significantly more destructive. Voles also eat some vegetation but less ravenously, and moles prefer non-plant food (e.g. insects, grubs, and worms).
Pocket gophers are ubiquitous across the western US (including all of California, not just north and south). Image via Vole Control and Scimetrics LLC.
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What plants do gophers avoid?
Gophers tend to avoid plants with a strong scent, bitter flavor, toxic sap, or similar irritating traits that make the roots, leaves, or stems less appealing to snack on. Rosemary, eucalyptus, oleander, and gopher purge are prime examples. In many cases, gopher resistant plants are also undesirable to voles, deer, rabbits, or other rodents. On the other hand, some plants are simply irresistible to gophers. In our garden, gophers are drawn to fig trees, verbena, and artichoke plants like potato chips!
Disclaimer and Gopher Cages
Gophers aren’t usually attracted to the “gopher resistant” plants listed below and should leave them alone for the most part. Meaning, these plants certainly won’t be their first choice when other food sources are available. However, gophers may eat just about any plant if they’re hungry enough! Young plants (of any type) are especially vulnerable to gopher damage.
So, even if a plant is considered gopher resistant, it may be prudent to plant young or valuable plants (e.g. expensive trees) in gopher cages – particularly if you’re dealing with a very active gopher population. Cages may not be necessary with just a couple of gophers around. It’s also important to note that the gopher resistance can vary depending on the variety or cultivar of these plants.
For example, we’re currently planting dozens of native gopher resistant plants – rock roses, catmint, yarrow, and sea daisies – but are still using flexible (moderately protective) gopher cages to offer the plants some level of protection while they get established. Roll-on mesh “speed baskets” (available in one gallon or 5-gallon sizes) are cheaper and much easier to work with than sturdier firm wire cages or DIY hardware cloth baskets, but they’ll degrade with time and gophers do occasionally chew through them. I would NOT use them for gopher-susceptible plants, but they’re perfect for this instance!
When in doubt, use a gopher cage to protect your plants.
Non-Toxic Gopher Control
Whatever you do, please do NOT use gopher bait or poison to control gophers. It puts ALL animals at risk of secondary poisoning and death – including domestic pets and wildlife! All too often, curious canines, cats, birds of prey, opossums, or other predators eat poisoned gophers (or rats) and become poisoned themselves. Learn about alternative non-toxic gopher control methods here, including pre-made gopher cages, DIY cages, raised bed protection, gopher repellents, natural predators, traps, and more.
Gopher Resistant Plants: Complete List
Here is a list of over 50 plants that gophers are not attracted to. An asterisk* denotes plants I have direct experience with and can personally confirm are not bothered by gophers – at least in our garden! And we’ve been gardening where gophers are rampant for well over a decade.
- Alliums (especially ornamental alliums) – gophers may eat garlic, onions or leeks but usually avoid them
- Amaryllis Belladonna
- Anemones
- Artemisia – including wormwood, mugwort and sagebrush
- Bearberry (groundcover manzanita)
- Bottlebrush*
- Breath of Heaven
- California Buckwheat (Eriogonum)*
- California Fuchsia (Epilobium)*
- Catmint*
- Ceanothus (California lilac)*
- Citrus trees* (once established, I would cage young trees)
- Coffeeberry (California buckthorn)*
- Columbine
- Coyote bush
- Currants (Ribes)
- Daffodils
- Day lillies
- Elderberry*
- Euphorbia species – cacti and succulents in this family, along with “gopher purge” (Euphorbia lathyris)
- Eucalyptus*
- Ferns*
- Fescue
- Fountain grass and deer grass
- Foxglove
- Grevillea*
- Hellebores
- Indian Hawthorn
- Lantana*
- Lavender*
continued below…
Gopher resistant plant list (continued)
- Manzanita*
- Marigolds*
- Monkeyflower (Mimulus)*
- Mint family* – including culinary mint or perennial shrubs like Coyote mint
- Monterey Cypress trees
- Mullein (Verbascum)*
- Myoporum (ground cover)
- Nandina (Heavenly bamboo)
- Oleander
- Palm trees
- Pomegranate* (supposedly, with ‘Wonderful’ variety being the most gopher resistant)
- Penstemon* (to varying degrees)
- Pine trees and redwoods
- Pineapple guava (feijoa)*
- Rock Rose (Cistus)*
- Rosemary*
- Salvias and sage* – especially native perennial salvias and Mexican sage
- Sea Thrift (Armeria)
- Seaside Daisy (Erigeron)*
- Society Garlic
- Strawberry Tree* (Arbutus unedo, marina, and menziesii)
- Thyme*
- Toyon
- Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum)
- Yarrow (Achillea)*
- Yerba Mansa
- Willowherb (Epilobium)
Gopher Resistant Fruit Trees or Shrubs
If us humans like to eat something, gophers probably do too! Unfortunately, that means there are very few gopher resistant edible plants:
- Elderberries
- Citrus, once established
- Pineapple guava (feijoa)
- Pomegranate (supposedly with ‘Wonderful’ variety being the most gopher resistant)
It’s also been reported that gophers don’t like to eat mulberry trees, avocado trees, apricots or plum trees, but we’ve had a mulberry and avocado killed by gophers! In fact, they chewed right through the basket and ate all the roots down to a nub. To be safe, I suggest putting all edibles and fruit trees in gopher baskets where gophers are a known menace.
Gopher Resistant California Native Plants
Landscaping with native plants packs a punch of benefits. Native plants support local biodiversity, wildlife and pollinators, are generally less maintenance, require no fertilizer, and here in California, have to be drought-tolerant. Even better, many California native plants are also gopher resistant! The ones that could survive constant gopher pressure here are the ones that have persisted and thrived.
- Artemisia – including wormwood, mugwort and sagebrush
- Bearberry (groundcover manzanita)
- California Buckwheat (Eriogonum)
- California Fuchsia (Epilobium)
- California grape
- California goldenrod
- Ceanothus (California lilac)
- Coffeeberry (California buckthorn)
- Coyote Bush
- Fescue (California and blue)
- Indian Hawthorn
- Manzanita
- Monkeyflower (Mimulus)
- Penstemon (Penstemon clevelandii, spectabilis and more)
- Pine trees and redwoods
- Salvias and sage (e.g. Salvia clevelandii, Black sage, hummingbird sage and others)
- Strawberry Tree (Arbutus menziesii) aka Pacific Madrone
- Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum)
- Yarrow
- Yerba Mansa
Sources: Personal experience, California Native Plant Society, Mostly Natives, Tasty Landscape, SF Gate
And that concludes this lesson on gopher resistant plants.
If you too struggle with gophers in your garden, I hope this gave you some great insight on plants to consider growing! Let me know if you have any questions or insight to share in the comments below. Also please consider pinning or sharing this post if you found it useful. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and happy plant shopping!
You may also enjoy:
- Non-Toxic Gopher Control: How to Gopher-Proof Your Garden
- How to Make a Homemade Gopher Basket for Trees
- 17 Ways to Save Water in the Garden and Landscape
- How to Build a Raised Garden Bed: Step-by-Step Guide
- How to Connect Drip Irrigation to a Hose Bibb (Spigot or Faucet)
Deanna Talerico
Deanna Talerico (aka DeannaCat) is a garden educator and writer with over 15 years experience in organic gardening. She is a retired Senior Environmental Health Specialist, and holds a M.A. in Environmental Studies and B.S. in Sustainability and Natural Resources.
28 Comments
Sanja
Beautiful garden! We are not to far down the road from you in SB and I am working on expanding our monarch waystation. Last year I planted a wildflower patch with an emphasis on zinnias and cosmos. We put down chicken wire, and it worked decently well to fend off the gophers. It is a large plot so it needed some wildflowers. Looking into planting for next season and wondering do you know of any wildflowers (I would like to sow seeds) that gophers don’t like? We have most all the plants you mention planted, but I just love the look of wildflowers too. Any suggestions appreciated! Thanks!!
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Sanja, so great to hear you are expanding your pollinator garden to include a lot more wildflowers! The wildflowers that do the best for us (both in germination and growth) are California poppies, clarkia, Indian Blanket, Tidy Tips, and lupine. We have had gophers eat some of our CA poppies but the plants are typically prolific re-seeders so we always have quite a few growing. We have gone through a few bags of the native Southwest wildflower seed mix from American Meadows and have been able to establish a number of varieties of wildflowers on our property, some better than others but it could be a good option for you if you are looking to spread wildflower seeds. Hope that helps and good luck!
Renee
Thanks for this article – it should be very helpful as I’m in the process of installing a new native CA garden. I don’t have gophers, but some voles. In your experience, are these plants resistant to vole damage as well? I’m also wondering about root restriction using the baskets or hardware cloth. The cheaper roll up baskets have such fine mesh it seems like they’re likely to restrict root growth or girdle roots if they do grow through the basket. Have you found that to be an issue on the roll up baskets?
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Renee, so great to hear you are creating a CA native garden! Generally speaking, plants that are gopher resistant also tend to be vole resistant as well. In regards to cages versus the roll up baskets, we haven’t found either of them to restrict roots and they are both made of material that will break down in a few years so as the plant matures, the cage won’t offer the same protection, but hopefully the plant is larger and can better withstand vole or gopher damage.
We have had gophers chew through the roll up speed baskets on occasion so they don’t work as well as the sturdier gopher baskets, however, they are far easier to work with which is helpful if you are planting out a lot of plants. It’s a time/money ratio for us as well, most flowering perennials or other CA native plants are fairly easy to come by at local nurseries in 1 gallon pots and are relatively inexpensive. Whereas, any and all fruit trees that we plant, we plant in sturdy premade gopher cages or gopher cages we make out of hardware cloth to ensure better gopher protection. Hope that helps and good luck with your project!
Dorothy Ellis
Front yard in a mess with gophers and weeds
Planted a manzanita a few years ago it is going well
Have a Meyer lemon bush that has done well full of lemons at the moment not quite ready to pick yet
Your list of gopher resistant plants is very helpful
Thank you
I am new to gardening in California
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Dorothy, glad you are in the process of transforming your space, good luck and have fun growing!
dan
Aaron & DeannaCat,
I woke up yesterday and discovered my Cilantro was missing.
I suspect a red squirrel, but no one will admit to it.
What companion plant/ squirrel-resistant plant would you recommend with Cilantro?
Merry Christmas to you both and thank you for your efforts.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Dan, onions, garlic, and shallots are likely your best bet as squirrels may have less of a propensity to each these veggies due to their strong flavor and aroma but I am not sure they will keep the squirrels out of your garden, they may just eat around them. When we had squirrel issues in the past, we found that using even a small amount or short fencing around the garden area in jeopardy was the best way to keep them out. Hope that helps and happy holidays to you as well!
Emmy
My cilantro is getting eaten by gophers 😠. They gobbled down 1/3 of my total cilantro and snacking on my baby stock, but on the flip side they are leaving my other prized veggies and fruits alone, but definitely going to try gopher netting on my annuals next year.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Emmy, gophers can be quite the problem, good luck and hopefully they continue to leave the rest of your garden alone this season.
RICHARD SCOTT
Excellent article. Thank you for sharing your experience.
We live in Oceanside, California. That’s a temperate coastal community infested with aggressive pocket gophers.
Those vermin are terrible. They completely destroyed our first vegetable garden as well as cherry trees, right down to the nub. I’ve witnessed them gobble down mint plants as I planted them. The “Caddyshack” cameos of Bill Murray battling golf coarse pocket gophers is spot on in depicting the gopher war.
I almost gave up entirely and said, “Okay Mr. Gopher. You win. It’s all yours. Everything.” Then, after studying the enemy and watching natural processes at work (snakes, hawks, dogs, blue heron and white egrets), I successfully planted a Rose Garden (121 cultivars), an Herb Garden, and a robust Orchard (75 trees).
Here’s what worked for us:
Offensive Gopher Approaches = King Snakes, Gopher Snakes, GopherHawk traps
Defensive Gopher Approaches = decaying gopher bodies, submerged bottomed out galvanized steel garbage cans, bricks
J Dos
Greetings,
Thanks for sharing your experience and perspective regarding my most hated garden nuisance – the dreaded gopher. My lady and I live in Santa Cruz County and this past spring/summer/fall the gophers have been particularly destructive. I’m guessing it’s owing to the historic winter rains. More water, more plants, more roots.
Any plant we value – including fruit trees – must be planted with gopher protection in mind. If you’re trying to grow fruit trees in loamy soil that you’re constantly watering – that’s a clarion call to gophers to devour its roots. Just don’t use the stainless steel cage varieties, as theoretically, they take longer to corrode. Any regular wire cage will break down in a few years and the roots will do fine. I believe the best you can do is hope the trees establish a healthy enough root system as they mature to resist an attack.
Admittedly, I’ve learned this the hard way the last few years. Some of the trees I initially planted as a rookie I didn’t cage properly. The first 2 fig trees we planted are gone. Fortunately, thus far, the 2 apple trees are okay, as is the pineapple guava. That’s actually how I found this article. Looking for gopher resistant fruit trees. Hope our Meyer lemon holds out long term!
We have about 60 varieties of California natives on the property and you’re right – mostly the gophers have ignored them in search of our tastier edible garden. Though they have devoured the yarrow. Go figure. It’s a neverending experiment. It’s nice to know we’re not the only ones experiencing the frustrating side of a (usually) rewarding passion. Cheers.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Good luck to you on your property and it definitely is a never ending battle and experiment with the gophers!
leslie outhier
Hey just so you know if a feijoa is indeed in the Myrtle family which is the same family as eucalyptus – but so are tropical guavas!
Dawn
Thank you for this informative article. I’m about to purchase a wide variety plants for a 60′ L x 10′ W planter. We have a lot of gophers, so I wanted to make sure the plants/shrubs I chose wouldn’t get eaten by the gophers. I’m happy to report many of the plants I chose are on your “Gopher Resistant Plants List”. 🙂 I can plant with confidence thanks to your article. I appreciate you.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
HI Dawn, best of luck to you in planting out your new garden space and have fun growing!
Leav
Thank you for this list! I will say a gopher ate my young lantana… I literally watched him pull it under. However, they have not come for the mature plants.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Leav, yes, we have had gophers eat supposed gopher resistant plants as well, it just decreases your odds of the plant being destroyed. As the plant or tree matures, it can withstand a gopher attack as its root ball will be larger and more advance. Good luck and have fun growing!
Nancy S
This is the most complete article I have found on gophers. Thank you so much for every bit of information, especially the list of plants. I plan to plant a number of gopher purge, as that has helped in the past. I have not had a gopher in 20 years and all of a sudden they are back. They are mocking me and eating all my seedlings and flowers. Ugh.
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Nancy, glad you found the article so helpful and good luck on controlling your gopher population, they can be quite the pest when it comes to most things that are planted in ground.
Rick Rohan
I grew up in Idaho by Caldwell. There was a bounty on gophers when I was a kid. I could get .25 cents a tail! That was a lot of money then for a kid then because there wasn’t much to go around.
We lived with my grandparents in a rural area where they grew peaches, berries and every vegetable they could to either sell or put up for later.
Gophers were a problem so I was busy all summer making twice daily rounds checking traps.
I was able to keep them at bay. Once in a while one would make it into the garden where it didn’t belong but it didn’t last long.
Just wanted to share.
Thanks,
Enjoy reading what you publish.
Rick
Aaron (Mr. DeannaCat)
Hi Rick, thanks for sharing your story and we appreciate your support, glad you enjoyed the article.
Liliana
Thanks for the list! Gophers in my garden ate the lantana roots ( it was a new plant and didn’t get a chance to get established)
I was listening to an UC garden masters seminar about gophers and they agree with you about the cages for gopher prevention, however, they made a point about not using them for trees, if needed, only using the flimsy type so that the roots can expand as much as needed. Also, about pineapple guavas, many new varieties don’t need to cross pollinate.
Daron B
Beautiful Yard! We would Best Friends.