Not to denigrate the absolute joy of seeing a newborn fawn taking its first wobbly steps or watching a twelve-point stag and his main squeeze sunbathing on the hillside, deer eat a lot. So wherever you fall on the deer spectrum--the extremes range from Feed Bambi to Cook 'em and Eat 'em--if you want to garden, you'll have to contend with their appetites. There are some excellent sources online for dealing with deer and as soon as I learn to post links, I'll hook you up with them.
In the meantime, remember this: any plant, no matter how deer resistant it may be, is not deer proof. Plants fresh from a nursery are especially appealing. Deer apparently feel compelled to taste whatever is new out there, so if something is no bigger than a few bites, it will be gone in a few seconds.
Also, deer are spiteful. Let me give you an example. Last summer I planted two cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis) by the stream. Now, cardinal flowers are supposed to be deer resistant, and when I checked out the first one the next day, that seemed to hold true because the top, although bitten off, had been partially chewed and then spit back out. Great, they are deer resistant, I thought, as I went to check on the second plant. Well, that one had been ripped out of the ground by its roots and then trampled. Okay, you think I anthropomorphize. Maybe the deer wasn't acting out of spite, just instinct. What ever the reason for its behavior, that deer made sure that a plant it found unpalatable would no longer compete for space and resources with plants the deer preferred. I have to respect that.
So, if you care about your young plants, give them a fighting chance. Put a little fence around them until they settle in, realize it's a big bad world out there, dig their roots in deep and start to produce whatever chemicals they need to produce in order to repel animals that want to eat them. (Actually, I like to anthropomorphize.)
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