Updated on September 7, 2026. Ratings below are university browse lists, not a six-pack tag. Confirm local herd pressure before you fill a shade bed with Beacon impatiens and call it deer-proof.
Yes. Deer eat impatiens. They are not “deer candy” on the level of hostas or tulips, and they are not resistant. Iowa State Extension, compiling Rutgers, Cornell, and Michigan State surveys, lists both garden impatiens (Impatiens walleriana) and rose balsam (I. balsamina) as occasionally severely damaged — the same annuals column as petunias and pansies. University of Georgia Circular 985 puts both species on the “occasionally or frequently browse — protection recommended” table with hosta, pansy, petunia, and rose. Minnesota’s deer-resistant annuals table includes wax begonia, marigold, zonal geranium, and blue salvia. Impatiens is not on it. For color they usually skip, use the deer-proof garden hub and the deer-resistant annuals list — not a downy-mildew tag sold as deer-proof.
| Plant | Four plants get sold as “impatiens.” Bedding / busy Lizzie is Impatiens walleriana (12–18 in.). New Guinea is I. hawkeri. Rose balsam / touch-me-not is I. balsamina. Native jewelweed is I. capensis, a woodland annual, not a six-pack. |
|---|---|
| Verdict | Yes. Occasionally to frequently browsed. Fence it, hang it above the browse line, or plant something else. Beacon / Imara XDR / SunPatiens are disease ratings, not deer ratings. |
| University rating | Iowa State (July 2022): I. walleriana and I. balsamina occasionally damaged. UGA C985 (full review Feb. 1, 2016): both on the protect-these list. Minnesota: not on the resistant-annuals table. Rutgers’ searchable 527-plant list does not currently carry a dedicated Impatiens row; Iowa’s compiled list is the one that cites Rutgers as a source. |
| What they eat, when | Flowers and succulent stems first, then the whole plant. Peak is after frost until the first freeze, especially in drought when irrigated pots stay green. Raids track deer feeding times. |
| Where it is worst | Unfenced shade beds under trees — the same travel lanes that empty hostas. Porch-rail baskets at four feet. Whiskey barrels at muzzle height. |
| Official sheets | Iowa State — deer damage · Iowa State — growing impatiens · UGA Circular 985 · Minnesota — white-tailed deer damage |
Four plants, one nursery name
Iowa State’s growing sheet (last reviewed April 2024) is the ID you need before you read a deer list. Garden impatiens — busy Lizzie, the Super Elfin / Accent look — is I. walleriana. Flowers 1 to 2 inches. Plants commonly 12 to 18 inches. They want moist, well-drained soil and 2 to 4 hours of filtered sun, or morning sun and afternoon shade. Heavy shade makes them taller and stingier with bloom. Sow seed 8 to 10 weeks before the outdoor date. Do not set them out until frost is done.
New Guinea impatiens (I. hawkeri) reached U.S. catalogs in 1970. Iowa: green, bronze, or variegated leaves and flowers up to 3 inches. Plant them about two weeks after the average last frost — they dislike cool nights. The thicker leaf is why people call them “tougher.” That is a downy-mildew fact. Iowa and UGA do not give New Guinea its own safer browse column.
Rose balsam (I. balsamina), also sold as touch-me-not, is the erect old-garden plant, 1 to 2½ feet, with double flowers partly hidden in the foliage and pods that burst when you touch them. Tom Thumb types stay 8 to 12 inches. UGA lists rose balsam on the same protect-these table as bedding impatiens. Hidden flowers do not hide the plant from a deer.
Native jewelweed (I. capensis) is a different job. University of Wisconsin Horticulture: an eastern North American annual of moist woods and ditches; deer will browse the foliage. A 2015 Journal of Ecology study treated orange jewelweed as a preferred deer food and found historically browsed New York populations lost about 20 percent of lifetime fruit under deer, versus 57 percent in historically protected populations. That is wild-plant ecology, not a “deer-resistant native impatiens” to swap for Super Elfin.
What they eat, and when
A deer has no upper incisors. It grasps and tears. On impatiens you get ragged stubs and missing flower clusters, often overnight. UGA’s deer circular is blunt about why fertilized landscape plants get hit: deer like nutrition-rich browse, and they get about a third of their water from irrigated, succulent tissue. A watered 12- to 18-inch shade carpet is exactly that.
Hanging baskets help only above the browse line. A porch-rail basket at four feet is still in range. Minnesota notes deer can clear as much as 12 feet when motivated, which is why an 8-foot woven-wire fence is the number on the damage pages — see how high a deer can jump. Garden impatiens are tender annuals. The first hard frost kills them. There is no fleshy crown waiting underground the way there is on a hosta. Stubs in July are done for the year.
Deer damage vs rabbits vs downy mildew
Do not treat every collapsed impatiens as a deer. The fixes are different.
- Deer. Ragged, torn stems. Whole clumps gone overnight. Browse can sit above two feet on a basket. Heart-shaped prints and pellet groups. Minnesota: deer damage looks rough or shredded, not cleanly clipped.
- Rabbit. A neat 45-degree cut, usually within a foot of the ground. In February 2025 a Hennepin County gardener asked Minnesota Extension why rabbits and deer were stripping impatiens in whiskey barrels; the answer pointed at the resistant-annuals list, not a new spray. Hardware cloth stops rabbits, not deer. Tactics: how to keep rabbits from eating plants.
- Downy mildew. Iowa recorded landscape outbreaks in 2012. The pathogen is the water mold Plasmopara obducens. Leaves yellow, curl down, show white fuzz underneath, then defoliate. No torn stubs. No hoof prints. Iowa: do not compost infected plants; do not replant susceptible I. walleriana in that bed the next year.
Older series Iowa names as mildew-prone — Accent, Tempo, Super Elfin — are still widely sold. Beacon™, Bounce™, and Imara® XDR were bred for that disease. New Guinea types, including SunPatiens®, are highly tolerant of it. None of those tags is a deer rating.
Where it is worst
This is a suburban eastern and midwestern shade-bed problem. High-density white-tailed deer towns — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Michigan, northern Virginia, the Twin Cities collar — are where a flat disappears in one night. Georgia Extension put impatiens on the browse list for the same reason Atlanta woods-edge yards get hit. Wild diet is still browse, mast, and agriculture; that menu is on what do deer eat. A Super Elfin at an oak drip line is a fertilized annual on a deer trail, which is why deer as pests sits next to this page.
The calendar is the opposite of pansies. Pansies are cool-season; heat finishes them. Impatiens go out after frost and stay succulent until freeze-up, so the raid window is the whole summer. Ground beds at the tree line fail first. Same shade, same height class, same overnight empty-bed look as hostas — except hostas resprout from a crown and impatiens do not.
What works
Physical exclusion first. Minnesota: a 50 percent cut in browse is a success; 30 percent is more typical if you only spray. For a shade bed that is the whole show, that is not enough.
- Fence the bed, not the cultivar. Eight-foot woven wire around a small garden works. A 50-inch micro-exclosure only a few feet on a side can also work, because deer dislike stepping into a tight box. Details: how to keep deer out of the garden.
- Hang them honestly high. Second-story hooks survive. Four-foot porch rails and whiskey barrels do not.
- Egg-based repellent on a schedule. Putrescent egg solids are the ingredient Minnesota still takes seriously. Spray before the first browse, reapply after rain, rotate products. Formulas: organic deer repellent.
- Swap the shade niche. Iowa’s mildew-management list names wax begonia, torenia, caladium, and coleus. Coleus sits in Iowa’s occasionally-damaged deer column with impatiens, so treat it as maybe better, not proof. Wax begonia is the one Minnesota puts on the resistant table. Shade annuals: deer-resistant annuals.
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What does not work
A tag that says “deer-resistant impatiens.” Beacon, Imara XDR, Bounce, and SunPatiens were bred for Plasmopara obducens, not for a suburban doe with fawns. A ring of marigolds around an unfenced shade bed. Hair, soap, mothballs, ultrasonic gadgets — Minnesota lists hair, soap, mothballs, and bone tar as untested home remedies. A 4-foot picket around an 18-inch plant is theater. Feeding the herd to “distract” them trains them to the property; what to feed backyard deer is the page that says don’t. Do not use pansies as the mildew swap if deer are the problem. Iowa names pansies as a shade-tolerant alternative to diseased impatiens, and files them in the same occasionally-damaged deer column.
Three substitutes that already have pages
- Ferns — Iowa State: nearly all ferns are rarely damaged. Same shade the impatiens wanted. Ostrich, cinnamon, Christmas, lady, and Japanese painted ferns are the usual garden set.
- Zonal geraniums (Pelargonium × hortorum) — on Minnesota’s resistant list. They want more sun than a classic impatiens bed. Use them where the shade breaks.
- Salvia — Iowa State: seldom damaged. Minnesota lists blue salvia (Salvia farinacea) with the resistant annuals.
True-shade flowers without a child URL yet: wax begonia and wishbone/torenia, both on the resistant-annuals page. Marigolds cover the sunny edge. The short flower shortlist is what flowers deer do not eat.
Related plants in the same yard
If deer found the impatiens, they have already walked the rest of the shade strip. Hostas go first. Hydrangeas sit on UGA’s protect-these list. Petunias and pansies go when the light opens up. Do not cage one basket and leave a hosta mound next to it. Layout and cost: how to keep deer from eating plants. Wild diet for the animal is what a white-tailed deer eats.
FAQ
Are New Guinea or SunPatiens more deer-proof than Super Elfin?
Not on any university list we cite. New Guinea leaves are thicker and the plants sit a little taller, so a truly high basket can outlast a 12-inch bedding carpet. That is height, not chemistry. Treat SunPatiens as mildew insurance, not deer insurance.
Will impatiens grow back after deer eat them?
Only if enough stem remains, and only this season. They are tender annuals in most states. Stubs in July: replant. Hostas resprout. Impatiens do not.
Do hanging baskets keep deer off impatiens?
Only above the browse line, on a structure a deer cannot stand on. A railing basket is a snack. So is a whiskey barrel.
Are Beacon impatiens deer-resistant?
No. Beacon, Imara XDR, and Bounce were released for impatiens downy mildew. Iowa still files the species as occasionally damaged by deer. Buy them if your shade bed melted from mildew. Do not buy them as a substitute for a fence.
Sources
- Iowa State Extension — Susceptibility of Plants to Deer Damage (I. walleriana and I. balsamina occasionally damaged; sources include Rutgers, Cornell, Michigan State; last reviewed July 2022)
- Iowa State Extension — Growing Impatiens in the Home Garden (12–18 in.; 1–2 in. flowers; 2–4 hours filtered sun; 8–10 week sow; New Guinea introduced 1970, flowers to 3 in., plant ~2 weeks after last frost; balsam 1–2½ ft; downy mildew 2012, Plasmopara obducens; Beacon / Bounce / Imara XDR; last reviewed April 2024)
- UGA Extension Circular 985 — Deer-Tolerant Ornamental Plants (I. walleriana and rose balsam on the protect-these list; irrigated plants supply about one-third of a deer’s water; full review Feb. 1, 2016)
- University of Minnesota Extension — White-tailed deer damage (impatiens not on the resistant-annuals table; 8-foot fence; 12-foot jump; 50 percent / 30 percent reduction; reviewed 2026)
- Ask Extension — Deer and rabbit resistant flowers #893316 (Hennepin County, Feb. 28, 2025: impatiens in whiskey barrels browsed by rabbits and deer)
- Rutgers NJAES — Landscape Plants Rated by Deer Resistance (A–D scale; no plant is deer-proof; Iowa’s compiled list cites this survey)
- University of Wisconsin Horticulture — Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis (native moist-woods annual; deer browse the foliage)
- Martin, Agrawal, and Kraft, Journal of Ecology 103 (2015) (orange jewelweed as a preferred deer food; 20 percent vs 57 percent fruit-production loss under browse)
This is a child of the deer-proof garden guide. Wild browse, not the shade six-pack, is on what deer eat.
