Image of baby deer by patio

Gardening for Deer

Yes, you read that headline right. Deer eat my plants, and I let them. But I also barely notice the nibbling. Here’s why (and how) I favor coexistence over resistance when it comes to these misunderstood animals.

2021 update: See resources section below for new information on gardening with deer!

The baby left in May as quietly as she’d arrived, disappearing while we slept. For two days, she’d nestled in fallen leaves, resting and grooming and standing up on wobbly legs to stretch.

Her departure was a relief, a sign that her mother was still caring for her. To avoid attention, does forage without their fawns, leaving them in dense vegetation and summoning newborns only when it’s time to nurse.Image of fawn by patioStill, I worried. As my husband and I peeked through the basement door just a few feet away from where the fawn lay, I wondered what would happen if she wandered so close to other members of our kind. For all the camouflage offered by our lush patio garden, her resting spot was surprisingly exposed to us humans, historically the most harmful predator of white-tailed deer.

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In the furthest corner of the patio, behind the loveseat and under a sweetshrub, the newborn fawn felt safe enough to take cover. But we could see her clearly through our basement door.

It’s hard to imagine now, but white-tailed deer were once nearly extinct in dozens of states due to hunting and habitat loss. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, they had vanished from Vermont, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. It wasn’t the first time deer populations went scarce. Shooting the animals out of existence was a national pastime for hundreds of years after European settlement. In the 20th century, efforts to transport them across regions so they could be “restocked” and hunted all over again were so successful that these animals now face different threats. High on the list is the wrath of gardeners calling for their heads.

My rejection of this attitude makes me an object of curiosity (and sometimes ridicule) in the gardening world, where I can count on rants against deer in almost every conversation. “I’ve been through my Bambi phase,” one woman told me, characterizing kindness toward animals—and my questioning of cultural narratives about them—as infantile. “I got over it.”

People ask me whether I’ve taken into account the “carrying capacity” of the land for deer. I like to pose a different question: What is the carrying capacity of the land for turfgrass? Why don’t we challenge the wisdom of our planting choices before ruling out the ability of our landscapes to support life?

I prefer to “get over” our uniquely human arrogance and take a broader view. I don’t know everything about the ecology of deer in forests, where they’re blamed for degrading wildlife habitat. But neither does anyone else. Yes, deer eat plants, but that’s not new. What is more recent are accelerated human-driven changes to plant and animal diversity: the imported earthworms that degrade soils in northern forests, the introduced Japanese stiltgrass and European garlic mustard that suppress the growth of native plants, the fragmented landscapes exacerbated by an insatiable desire for large lawns, and the decline of large predators caused by hunting and habitat destruction.

Occasionally people ask me whether I ever factor the “carrying capacity” of the land for deer and other species into my thinking. Reversing this concept, I like to ask a different question: What is the carrying capacity of the land for turfgrass? Why don’t we question the wisdom of our planting choices before ruling out the ability of our landscapes to support life? The carrying capacity of my land for deer is likely greater than that of my neighbor’s land down the street, even though his is twice the size. Why? Because mine is filled with plants that deer can eat; his is filled with lawn.

I don’t blame deer for being deer in the same way I don’t blame cats for being cats or earthworms for being earthworms. Rather than casting aspersions on other animals, I examine instead the contributions of our own species to degraded habitat—and the ways we can learn from those mistakes and mitigate or even reverse the damage. I garden not just for wildlife but with them, giving weight to their survival needs more than to my own cosmetic preferences. Just because I can’t rejuvenate all the forests around me doesn’t mean I have to keep mowing down my own property. Deer visit our backyard daily to eat, but the following experimental methods have been so successful that we barely notice the nibbling in our prolific gardens.

Nurture nature’s deer food.
Image of jewelweed with bee
Relegated most often to roadside ditches, jewelweed is not only valuable to bees and hummingbirds but also to deer.

When creating habitat for wildlife, it’s important to remember your goals are different from those of conventional landscaping. To meet their mission of making the world safe for lawns (and profitable lawn products), pesticide pushers and turfgrass totalitarians urge us to remove Canada goldenrod, jewelweed, wild grape, and countless other plants that would otherwise nourish deer.

There’s no better way to learn about this special brand of cynicism than to come across a new mystery plant and turn to the Internet for help with identification. Online searches related to one of my recent finds gleaned reviews negative enough to make a grown plant cry: “A grass imposter” that causes “infestations,” pronounced a book on mid-Atlantic gardening. A “Weed of the Month” with an “unsightly” brown appearance in winter pastures, offered a horse magazine. “Often troublesome in pastures, lawns, orchards, nurseries and gardens,” warned university extension specialists.

Image of nimblewill and stiltgrass
A tale of two grasses: The nimblewill on the left feeds grazing animals and outcompetes Japanese stiltgrass (right), which has few other natural controls and crowds out native plants that provide important habitat for wildlife. Lawn care companies, pesticide manufacturers and agricultural institutions cast both these plants as villains, even though nimblewill’s only crime is turning brown in the winter.

It was a lot of bad press for a plant that does so much good. Muhlenbergia schreberi, or nimblewill (as it’s known more commonly by the few people who even know it at all), is a pretty native grass. It can outcompete Japanese stiltgrass, which is difficult to eliminate by other means. And perhaps most interesting of all, deer sometimes graze on nimblewill. Yet consumer need for unnatural green is so strong that Syngenta developed a selective herbicide to kill it, while other companies shamelessly encourage homeowners to spray even more broadly. “Don’t be fooled by its cute name,” advises Monsanto on its Roundup website. “This aggressive grass sets seeds in the fall and hides until spring.” (Never mind that Monsanto helped create a monster in the form of a genetically engineered grass now threatening to wreak havoc on sensitive wildlife habitats in Oregon—and later abdicated responsibility for righting the wrong.)

Let woody plants spread.
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Staghorn sumacs, a favorite browse plant of deer, draws many other species to our yard, including this scarlet tanager. It grows so prolifically that I consider nibbling by deer to be free pruning assistance (a service that also creates sites for twig-nesting bees who can’t excavate on their own). Sometimes the sumacs spread in shady spots where I know they won’t survive long, but I leave them there anyway as extra deer food.

“Trees could solve the problem if people trying to improve things would only allow them to take over,” writes German forester Peter Wohlleben in The Hidden Life of Trees. He’s referring to the benefits of dense canopies along rivers and streams, where trees could naturally shade out giant hogweed and other invasive species.

But the sentiment hits close to home—and my own backyard—for another reason. Trees and shrubs have been integral to our peaceful coexistence with deer, who count among their favorite treats the staghorn sumacs and sassafras that have suckered into our former lawn. Though we didn’t know it when we began ceding turfgrass to nature, a later reading of the literature confirmed these two species as favorite browse plants for deer in our region. (And contrary to popular belief, staghorn sumacs are not the same plants as poison sumacs; they are not even in the same genus.) Other vigorous spreaders like elderberries, blackberries, and dogwoods are high on the deer menu, too.

Image of sassafras grove
An area beyond our patio was nothing but turfgrass until one summer we noticed these sassafras sprouting. The patch is one of three areas where the trees have begun to take hold, spreading densely even as they continue to feed deer.

Left to their own devices, these plants provide an endless supply of food because of their rippling growth habits. As Wohlleben writes of the trees nibbled by deer in his homeland, “Usually, the deer don’t destroy all the little trees in one small group, so there are always a couple that escape damage and battle on upward.”

The deer don’t destroy all the budding trees and shrubs on my land either; they prune some while leaving dozens of others alone. Most of the time in my community, it’s the humans doing the destroying, usually without even knowing it. “These shrubs can be important for wildlife,” notes a University of Missouri article about deer habitat, “but they are often mowed before they can provide any benefits.”

Let lawn go to meadow.
Image of poodle in meadow
Early successional plant communities following disturbance – in this case, decades of mowing – include a diversity of grasses and wildflowers. Deer eat young plants in the meadow and also sleep among the tall grasses. (The poodle we’re petsitting is decidedly more domesticated but provides a bit of photographic perspective and some gratuitous cuteness.)

Deer are attracted to open foraging areas adjacent to woods, or “edge” zones that provides both food and cover. Landscaping standards of modern suburbia mimic the basic framework of this habitat—with open lawns and tree-lined borders—but the food offerings are scant by comparison. In the more natural setting of a sunlit clearing in an intact forest, a diversity of grasses and wildflowers sprout, followed by shrubs and tree saplings.

By contrast, deer looking for nutrition in acres of manicured turfgrass have much less to choose from: typically a couple of hostas, a few daylilies, maybe some tasty rosebuds. In the context of expansive lawns, what looks like abundance to a gardener seems like half-empty grocery shelves to animals, and they’ll take what they can find to support their dietary needs.

In the context of expansive lawns, what looks like abundance to a gardener seems like half-empty grocery shelves to animals, and they’ll take what they can find to support their dietary needs.

As we’ve let the trees and shrubs sucker along our woods’ edges, we’ve also let the back acre of formerly mowed grass come into its own—and discovered a diversity of plants that had just been waiting for the right moment to sprout. Some, like broomsedge and purpletop grass, were probably already in the seedbank. Others, like late boneset, may have spread from elsewhere on the property. Goldenrods have popped up for the first time this year. Though deer wander around the edges of the meadow each evening, the only lasting evidence of their presence are depressions in the grasses where they curl up to sleep.

Let plants choose their destinies—and their allies.
Image of Joe Pye and protector plants
In good company: As the volunteer offspring of a large stand of Joe Pye weed at the edge of a wildflower planting, this baby had diverse neighbors where it planted itself this spring on the other side of the garden: blue mist flower, boneset, golden ragwort, and swamp sunflower. It is one of the only Joe Pyes that has remained untouched throughout the season.

A proliferation of spreading shrubs, trees, and meadow plants not only ensures there’s enough food to share; it also mixes things up enough to keep deer guessing. “I have noticed over the years that plants in a meadow rarely suffer from significant browsing by white-tailed deer,” writes landscape designer Larry Weaner in Garden Revolution. “Even the plants that deer favor seem to escape this form of attention when intermingled with plants that the deer don’t eat.”

Incorporating these observations into his gardening techniques, Weaner adds less tasty plants such as ladyferns to the same spot where he’s planting known deer snacks like white wood aster, ensuring that “the deer can’t get to the plant they like without also encountering the one that they don’t.”

Image of Joe Pye in mistflower2
Can you spot the Joe Pye now? Neither can the deer. It’s growing tall to the right of the swamp sunflower in the center, obscured by blue mistflower and golden ragwort.

While I’ve never actively employed this practice beyond the vegetable garden, I’ve noticed nature doing it for me. Where Joe Pye weed grows in a large stand I planted, the deer find it not long after its first tender leaves appear. But where Joe Pye reseeds itself among other species—swamp sunflower, boneset, and blue mistflower—the deer leave it alone. Similar strategies have kept our asters from being munched on en masse.

Incorporate harmless sensory deterrents.

butterfly on soap stakeThough my main strategy for peacefully coexisting with deer is to plant for them rather than resisting their need to eat, their attraction to tender growth of new plantings occasionally calls for gentle repellents.

Sometimes those repellents come in the form of more plants, even dead or invasive ones. Over the past two years, I’ve created natural caging out of trimmings of invasive multiflora roses growing at our woods’ edge, placing them around the nibbled Joe Pyes. Allowing the surrounding lawn (or whatever is left of it) to grow taller at the edges of the garden where the plants reside also provides a visual and tactile deterrent.

Image of rosebush trimmings
Not the prettiest picture–at least not yet. But after surrounding the tender Joe Pyes (above, center) with cut rose branches, I am happy to report that a couple of months later the Joe Pyes stand tall and dense (below), obscuring the dead rose trimmings and readying their abundant blooms for this season’s butterflies.

Image of large stand of Joe Pye

For isolated young trees or shrubs, caging is simplest, but such exclosures may be impractical in larger areas. In those cases, I hang bars of soap or ask my husband to defend the borders by relieving himself around the perimeters of new plantings (a locally sourced, humane and free-range alternative to “predator urine,” which is either not what producers claim it to be or inhumanely produced, since there is no way to collect that much urine from animals living in the wild). I’ve even been known to add a stake and place an upside down plastic pot on top—a lazy woman’s version of a scarecrow. None of these methods requires much time, but because deer quickly adapt, rotating gentle repellents helps keep them on their hooves long enough to ensure we have an ever-growing supply of food for them and all the other fauna, both macro and micro, who share our land.

Image of deer by ash tree
I couldn’t have imagined this scene in my backyard when I was a young girl and deer were much less common.

I’m old enough to remember when deer sightings were rare events; as a little girl, I longed to see one on our camping trips to Virginia—and certainly wouldn’t have dreamed of spotting a herd in our suburban backyard. But I’m also young enough to have missed the chance to see other animals who were common only a few decades ago and have now vanished from these parts. The northern bobwhites my next-door neighbor admired in the 1970s are all but gone from our community, having long ago vanished along with the hedgerows and grasslands they relied on for cover and food.

Rapid declines of such species are now the norm; witness the passenger pigeons, who went extinct when the last one died in a zoo in 1914, just decades after millions of them still filled the skies across much of North America. If history has taught us anything, it’s that we should take no animals for granted, even the common ones—and we should stop blaming other species for their mere presence in the environment and start examining what we can do to help them. It’s not that hard. My small suburban plot of land is living, vibrant proof.

Image of Eastern tiger swallowtails on Joe Pye weed
The Joe Pye weed are on track to grow taller than I am and bloom just in time for the next generation of Eastern tiger swallowtails and other butterflies and bees. This stand was initially eaten by deer last year, too, but my rotating system of gentle repellents – combined with the dense vegetation throughout the property – ensured there was enough for all the animals.

Resources

NEW! in 2021:

You asked for it! Now it’s available free on my website. This handout, “Gardening Among Hungry Mammals,” can help you get started in planting species that both feed and deter deer and other animals.

Also, check out my article in All Animals magazine on tips for creative planting strategies, “Deer Eat My Garden—and It Flourishes.”

Gardening for All Species

My new book, The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife, published in April by Princeton Architectural Press, provides more ideas on planting for wildlife as well as preventing conflict with the animals.

Planting and Cultivation Strategies

While reading Garden Revolution by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher, I nodded my head in enthusiasm at the turn of nearly every page; most of the planting and cultivation strategies mirror my own, but Weaner has proven their success in large-scale projects. For further inspiration and ideas on identifying and nurturing plants that are valuable to wildlife but often yanked from gardens, check out my #WeedsNotWeeds series.

Though lists of so-called “deer-resistant plants” are easy to come by in gardening circles, finding species actually preferred by deer is trickier. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but you have to know where to look. Illinois Wildflowers, the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the Forest Service fire ecology database have helped me make many flora-fauna connections. More deer-specific information is available from natural resources agencies, universities, and hunting organizations that post guidelines for creating deer food plots. Their motivations for feeding deer are usually different from mine, but I’ve found the advice helpful in learning how to plant for the animals. Some interesting articles include “Know Your Native Deer Foods” and “Whitetail 101: What Do Deer Eat?”

Vegetable Gardening with Wildlife

If a farmer can produce enough plants for commercial sale, feed her own family and nourish the many deer, squirrels, birds and other animals who visit her property, it’s a good bet she’s got some great advice for others, too. Tammi Hartung’s book, The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener, provides a wealth of practical information for home gardeners. (Tammi is also profiled in my book as a humane gardening pioneer.)

Historical Perspective

A History of White-Tailed Deer Restocking in the United States, 1878 to 2004 provides a state-by-state account of deer management programs. For a fresh perspective on forest ecology as it relates to deer presence, see The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell.

(Photos by Nancy Lawson)

38 thoughts on “Gardening for Deer”

  1. What a lovely post, Nancy, and one that speaks to me. Deer often wander into our front yard in our fairly heavily populated neighborhood in Silver Spring, although only at night. I feel wonder at seeing them, but also a sense of guilt for our role in shrinking their habitat. I have a few lilies and hostas in my front yard, and the deer usually nibble at them. I don’t mind at all — in fact, it makes me inordinately happy when they do!

  2. Thank you for this informative and timely post! I am moving in a few weeks to a 5+ acre lot, more than half of which is a groomed lawn. I will be landscaping with a permaculture mindset, but also wish to make it enjoyable for as many non-human visitors as possible. And as an herbalist, I appreciate your support of plants such as the jewelweed and staghorn sumac. I only recently discovered your writing, and am already informed and delighted.

    1. Hi Ruth, that is great! I love to hear when people with compassion and concern for wildlife buy any property, but especially ones of that size and larger. You can really help a lot of animals there. Thank you for reading, and I’m so glad you find it useful!! 🙂

  3. Great info as usual. And try to attract only to areas where they would be safe. Minimize that road kill.

    1. Hi Curt! Thank you! That’s a good poit. I worry about that with all the animals — there are good and bad sides to roadside plantings. But it’s especially concerning with deer.

  4. Thank you for this wonderful information. So many people don’t want to share with wildlife. I am very lucky to live in a condo complex surrounded with acres of trees, and we also have a meadow. I promote the planting of natives around the complex, with good success. I also have the ability to cut down invasive plants. It’s nice to find others that want to share with deer; they have to eat, too!

    1. Hi Karen, that’s fantastic! I’d like to interview you some time about your efforts because people often think they can’t do anything if they live in a condo or are part of a homeowners association. Your story would be inspiring to many. 🙂

  5. Really great post, I have some corners on my own lot where I have piled some brush for animals to hide in as well as added some water features and allowed some plants to thrive as “edibles”. I live steps away from a town center and have had a buck visit my small fish pond for a drink. He left as quietly as he came once he quenched his thirst. It was an unforgettable moment.

    1. Hi Deb, thank you! That must have been magical to see the buck drinking! They sometimes drink from our birdbaths, and I would like to have something a little bigger for them like what you’ve created. It is also a really good idea to add the brush piles – if you live in an area where your yard is visible, no one will even notice or care when they are set back in the corners like that.

  6. The real question is, what is the land’s carrying capacity for human beings? I think we exceeded that already some time ago. We should be humble about our place on the planet.

  7. Thank you very much, Nancy! Compassion and consideration wins! I have been gardening and found your article while trying to find plants to make my garden wildlife, including deer, friendly. I was saddened to find mostly hunter articles. You are a breath of fresh air.

    1. Thank you, Jenny, and thank you for reading! I find that happens so often when I’m looking up lots of different species — the top results are pest control and nuisance wildlife control companies. Last week I was writing something about coyotes, and in trying to find answers to some questions I had about natural behaviors, I kept coming across primarily websites telling people how to exploit those natural behaviors so they could lure coyotes and kill them. We need to flood the internet with a more humane perspective!

  8. There is advice aplenty for fighting deer with respect to gardens but this is the first I’ve come across for working with the deer and other wild animals. I see the deer in my yard and I know that by planting a garden and excluding them, I will be reducing the food available to them. Now I’m going to create a yard that will feed us both. Thanks.

  9. This was a great read and a lovely perspective. I was watching the deer in our woods yesterday and realized I wanted to plant beetroot and other deer loving greens for them, especially come winter when good nutrition scarce. I’ve marked the books you recommended on my research list. I’ll be ready come fall. Thank you.

    1. @JJ, I’m no expert whatsoever, but I’m going to put my concern out there, with hopes that someone who is an expert can clear up the confusion for both of us.

      Your comment caught my eye because I’ve had the same thought, and considered buying huge sacks of kale or something to put in the woods for the deer during winter. But I read somewhere that a deer’s digestive system is adapted to eating greens during the summer months, but that during the winter they can’t digest fresh greens, which would make them very sick at that time of year.

      If I’m wrong about this, I hope I can be corrected. And then I’d grow something for the deer in winter, except I never see them on my property — I’m too close to too many major roads. (Bye-bye, habitat.)

      1. Chessie,
        Thanks for your input. That’s extremely interesting and something I believe I have heard as well but it only registered on not putting out deer corn, or something of the sort. It’s funny since I wrote that, there has been a nursing fawn in our woods which made me think towards growing extra in season from now on and simply planting it where the deer have full reign. Candidly, I stand with you as someone willing to help but also hesitate to misstep. I suppose that’s where the research will come in handy. If nature is doing it I’m more than willing to go with it.

        Please bear with me though, as this is the first I’ve ever researched into considering deer with landscaping. Where I am in Virginia, it’s not a common line of thought. Though, watching out for all with kindness should be.

  10. So pleasantly surprised to find this article. In thinking of adding walking paths in our woods, I was searching for deer-friendly flowering plants, and came across this page. I am completely animal friendly (vegan-ish vegetarian for my whole life), so the deer in our yard have safety (and I think they know it…). We’ve had 2 years now of baby twins hanging around. Such a privilege that they call our woods home! I have always thought people who would elect to shoot a porcupine or deer or pest of whatever kind, were kind of supporting their own problem…Isn’t shooting one, just making space for another? It’s cruel and ultimately won’t solve anything. I completely agree with finding a balance so everyone can live happily. We always grow more kale and brussels in our garden than we need because the deer love them and we take the garden fence out at the end of the season and let them have the extras. 🙂

    1. Hi Arielle, thank you so much for writing — your approach is a breath of fresh air. Sharing as you do is key — too many home landscapes are filled with a majority of turfgrass, and then people get angry when deer or other herbivores eat the few plants that are left. Every year that goes by just further confirms my belief that it is possible to coexist. We have had resident deer here all year — about six of them every day — and yes, they eat stuff. But the creature who “eats” far more is the property owner behind us who took down hundreds of trees to sell for lumber over the summer, not because he needed to do it to survive but just because he can. Why is he allowed to destroy so many living beings so thoughtlessly, yet an animal eats some saplings for sustenance and gardeners call for her head? I’ve found an amazing balance here where the deer love certain things like goldenrod and pokeweed and frost asters, and those flowers are mixed in with other things they don’t like as much … so no matter what, there is always an abundance of all kinds of plant species — and this year we even had rare bumblebees for the first time!

      I’m going to write more about it soon — in the meantime, thank you so much for reading and for checking in and doing what you do for the animals! 🙂

  11. Love this article. I came upon it while looking for native plants that repel deer…and now I am rethinking it all! I especially like your strategy that protects the joe pye weed by surrounding it with less deer-friendly natives.
    Lots to think about! Thank you!

    1. Thanks, Mary! As I just mentioned to another commenter, John, here are some more resources on the topic:

      Recently I wrote a column on the topic that was just published in All Animals magazine. It’s short but might provide some additional tips: https://www.humanesociety.org/news/deer-eat-my-garden-and-it-flourishes.

      And just in case this helps, there are some tips in this video, too (though it’s also mixed with lots of other stuff besides deer herbivory tips): https://www.humanegardener.com/virtual-habitat-tour-my-humane-garden/

  12. Thank you so much for this! I’m about to start a new season in a new garden that’s visited nightly by deer. I’ve been researching wild gardening techniques but have been really nervous about creating a garden without putting up fences to exclude wildlife. The norm around me is lawns, tidy borders and fences so it’s great to know that there are people out there daring to do things differently.

    1. Hi John, I’m so glad it helps! Recently I wrote a column on the topic that was just published in All Animals magazine. It’s short but might provide some additional tips: https://www.humanesociety.org/news/deer-eat-my-garden-and-it-flourishes.

      And just in case this helps, there are some tips in this video, too (though it’s also mixed with lots of other stuff besides deer herbivory tips): https://www.humanegardener.com/virtual-habitat-tour-my-humane-garden/

  13. Thank you for this article, I just moved onto my family’s over groomed land and have been slowly creating a safe space for crows, birds, deer, and opossums. This article was so helpful and I plan to incorporate some of these plants along our tree line.

  14. Thank you for writing this lovely article. As I was researching deer/wildlife friendly plants I was distraught that most of the articles related to deer were for hunting…so disgusting. Definitely took some notes. I hope to be able to make the yard more friendly to our neighbor creatures.

  15. Such a great writer. Wild animals they are as one would say, but even with your 50 acres property, I find it mind boggling that they want to devour our vegetable garden we spent time and money on. The fence is going up.

  16. Just tripped over your article and must say how much I appreciate your point of view. Have about six deer visit our property each afternoon. They are attracting to the peanuts in our birdfeeders. Was planning to add native plants for birds but will add deer to this equation. Thanks again

  17. I enjoyed this post. Each we year we have a couple fawns and I love watching them grow. I’m more than OK sharing my garden with them. After all, this was their home first.

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