Thanks for your quick reply, Mark! I will take a deeper look at your list of suggestions above, I basically killed our cedar hedges because I can’t justify wasting water on a shrub so poorly suited to our climate! 🙂

We have just added boxwood to the plant database. It is not as drought resistant as caragana but it is a lot better than cedar. It is relatively slow growing, however.

Deer resistance is a tricky subject. In the end it depends largely on how hungry the deer are and the individual tastes of the deer. I can give you some general guidelines, however. All of the hedge candidates that we have mentioned in the two articles will be more deer resistant than a cedar hedge. Barberry and Oregon Grape will be the most resistant. The rest have a moderate deer resistance with the Burning Bush and Rocky Mountain Juniper being slightly more susceptible to damage. I hope that this helps.