We Built 3 Garden Fences Before Getting Vegetable Garden Fence Designs Right

How many times can you build the wrong fence before you admit you don’t actually know what you’re doing? That’s what I was thinking in our second summer out here, standing in the kitchen garden looking at a row of bean plants that had been eaten down to stubs overnight. I’d spent two weekends that spring looking up vegetable garden fence ideas and designs, picked something that looked sturdy and intentional, and something had walked right through it like it wasn’t there.

We’ve built three fences for the kitchen garden now. One came down. One is still standing but only works because of a reason that doesn’t make any logical sense. And one isn’t finished. I’m not sure it ever will be.

The height that actually matters

Before I get into what went wrong for us specifically, here’s the practical part, because this is probably what you searched for and you deserve a straight answer before I wander off into our specific failures.

1. Rabbits: 2 feet of fence height will stop most rabbits, but height is not your real problem. The bottom 12 inches is where it falls apart, and I’ll get to that.
2. Groundhogs: 3 feet minimum above ground, and again, the underground barrier matters more than height. Groundhogs are determined diggers.
3. Deer: The standard advice is 8 feet for a single fence. We’ve also seen recommendations for two parallel 4-foot fences with a 3-foot gap between them, based on the idea that deer won’t jump into a narrow space. Our experience with this is complicated and I’ll explain in a later section.
4. Chickens (keeping them out, not in): 4 feet usually works if they’re not particularly motivated. Our chickens are motivated. 5 feet works better.
5. Small dogs and foxes: 5 feet, though foxes are more likely to dig under than climb over.

These are Zone 7a numbers, Tennessee specifically, where we’re dealing with white-tailed deer, eastern cottontails, groundhogs, and whatever else lives in the wood line at the back of the property. Your regional wildlife mix will be different.

Rabbits don’t care about your aesthetic

Our first garden fence was, genuinely, pretty. Ben found cedar posts on sale at the Tractor Supply in town, we strung them with a dark green welded wire that looked sharp against the raised beds, and I was honestly proud of it. It came in around $180 for materials and took us most of a Saturday to put in. It looked like a real homestead garden fence.

The rabbits were inside it before the tomatoes set fruit.

What I’d built was a 30-inch tall fence with welded wire that had 2×4-inch openings. Eastern cottontail rabbits can squeeze through a 3-inch opening. I did not know this. The agricultural extension website I’d read mentioned it in passing but I didn’t think it applied to us because we lived on five acres and I had a barn cat. Hank does hunt. He just doesn’t hunt on a schedule that aligns with rabbit feeding times, apparently.

The fix was to add a layer of chicken wire along the bottom 18 inches, which I did, which was ugly and annoying and took another half day. And it mostly worked, but by then I’d already lost the first bean planting and half a row of lettuce. There was no silver lining there. I just lost those plants. We bought lettuce at the farmers market that week like we’d never moved out here at all.

Ben had suggested chicken wire from the beginning. I’d said it looked cheap. He hadn’t pushed it, which was generous of him, but I could tell he was very carefully not saying anything when we stapled the chicken wire on afterward.

What we learned about underground barriers (and what we still don’t understand)

After the rabbit situation, I started reading about burying fence wire to stop diggers. The standard recommendation is to bury 6 to 12 inches of wire, then bend the bottom 6 inches outward at a 90-degree angle, away from the garden. The idea is that when an animal starts digging at the base of the fence, it hits the buried horizontal section and gives up.

We did this on the second fence, the one we built in year two. Buried 10 inches of hardware cloth, bent the bottom out about 8 inches. It took most of a day just for the trench work and Ben’s back was not happy about it. Hardware cloth is more expensive than welded wire — we used a 100-foot roll of half-inch hardware cloth that ran about $65 — but it’s the right material for this because the openings are small enough to stop mice and voles too.

The underground barrier worked on the groundhog side of the garden. It has not worked in the lower corner near the herb spiral, and I genuinely cannot figure out why. Same fence, same burial depth, same outward bend. Something has dug under it twice in the past year. Ben thinks the soil composition is different there — it’s wetter and looser near where the land starts to slope — and maybe that’s it. Or maybe whatever is digging there is just more motivated than the groundhog. I don’t know. If you’ve had this happen and figured it out, I’d genuinely like to know.

The deer fence that worked for all the wrong reasons

This is the part that bothers me, because I can’t turn it into a rule.

After our first year here, we had a deer problem along the back edge of the kitchen garden where it meets the treeline. Standard advice said we needed an 8-foot fence, which we couldn’t afford at that point. What we actually built was a 5-foot T-post fence with two strands of polywire at the top — basically what you’d use for a low-cost electric fence perimeter, except we never actually connected it to the charger. It just looked like an electric fence.

Deer have not crossed it in two years.

This should not work. Every reliable source I’ve read says deer will eventually test an unelectrified fence, and a 5-foot fence is well within a white-tailed deer’s jumping ability. Maybe ours are timid. Maybe the treeline gives them enough to browse that they’re not motivated. Maybe the polywire moves in the wind and that’s enough to make them uncertain. Ben thinks they just haven’t had a bad enough year yet and we’re one hard winter away from finding out this fence is useless.

He might be right. But it’s held for two growing seasons, and I’m not sure what to do with that except report it and let you decide what it’s worth.

About the goat situation

Someone always asks about this, so I’ll say it quickly: livestock fencing and garden fencing are different problems, and I can’t really help you with the overlap because we haven’t solved it ourselves.

Pepper, our smaller goat, got into the kitchen garden twice last spring. She had to go through or around two separate fence lines to do it, and we still aren’t sure how she managed the second time. June just stands at the fence and complains. Pepper is a problem with hooves.

The garden fence was not built to keep out goats and it does not reliably keep out goats. Those are two different fencing projects with different requirements and different budgets and I’m not going to tell you I have that figured out.

5 materials we tested and why cost isn’t the deciding factor

We’ve spent probably $400 total on garden fencing materials over three years. Here’s what we’ve used and what I actually think about it:

• Welded wire (2×4 inch openings): Inexpensive, around $30-40 for a 50-foot roll, and holds its shape well. Useless as your only barrier against rabbits or anything small. Good for the upper portion of a fence if you’ve got hardware cloth at the bottom.
• Hardware cloth (half-inch openings): More expensive but the right tool for the lower section, especially underground. A 25-foot roll of 36-inch hardware cloth runs about $35-45. The edges are sharp and will cut you — gloves are not optional.
• Chicken wire: Ben was right and I was wrong. It’s cheap, flexible, and perfectly adequate for rabbit exclusion at the base of a fence. It does rust faster than hardware cloth. Budget option that works.
• T-posts: We prefer these over wood posts for the main fence line because they go in faster with a post driver and they don’t rot. About $5-7 each at Tractor Supply. You’ll want a post driver, and yes it’s worth owning one if you have any real amount of fencing to do.
• Polywire and step-in posts: Useful for temporary exclusion and honestly more versatile than I expected. Good for blocking off a section of the garden while something establishes. Not a permanent solution.

The third fence, still not finished

The current fence project has been going since late March. It’s now the kind of ongoing situation where I’ve stopped giving Ben a timeline and he’s stopped asking for one.

What we’re doing is replacing the original cedar post fence — the pretty one that failed — with a proper two-layer system. Hardware cloth on the bottom 24 inches, welded wire above that, buried underground barrier, the whole thing. It’s about 120 feet of perimeter and there are corners that still don’t have posts in them. One section near the greenhouse is being held in place by a combination of two T-posts and what I believe is wishful thinking.

Ben keeps saying we should just finish it in a weekend push. I keep saying I want to do the corners right this time, which means getting the post angles correct, which means I keep reading forum threads at night and then not doing it. This is a pattern I am aware of.

I’ve started to wonder whether the goal is a finished fence or an adequate one. The adequate fence is maybe 80 percent done and it’s working. No major wildlife losses this season. We got tomatoes, we got beans, the squash survived the squash bugs long enough to produce something. The finished fence would require two more weekends and I don’t know when those are coming.

The deer have been at the wood line more than usual this fall. Ben noticed it too. He didn’t say anything about the polywire fence when he pointed it out, but he looked at it for a while before we walked back to the house. I don’t know what they’re planning and I don’t think the fence knows either.