Little bunnies hopping around your property are adorable but lose their charm quickly when they chomp your plants down to the ground.
Barriers and Repellants
For individual plants, you can’t beat wire wastebaskets from the Dollar store, turn them upside down over the plant. You can also buy decorative cloches from gardening centers.
For taller individual plants, you can surround your plants with plastic forks, pointy side up. This prevents the rabbits from eating comfortably.
For larger areas, raised beds and planters offer an advantage to plants planted directly in the ground. You can place chicken wire, with a mesh one inch or smaller, around your planting beds. It needs to be at least two feet tall and buried three to six inches underground. It is recommended to bend the buried wire away from plantings.
Liquid Fence appears to be an option that isn’t thought to be harmful to pollinators. It is best applied to leaves and not on anything that you might want to eat. Apply in the morning or afternoon as application in direct sun can cause damage to your plants. It needs to be reapplied once a month or after heavy rain. You can also do a web search for homemade spray formulas using herbs and dish soap. Blood meal scattered around your plants is another option.
Planting Natives
- Take extra measures to protect young plants that are not yet well-established.
- Planting in volume can help prevent total decimation of any individual plants.
- Plant strong-scented herbs such as lavender, oregano, rosemary, sage, and thyme around your planting beds to repel bunnies.
- Native plants tend to be very hardy and will often resprout even after stripped of foliage.
- Take extra steps to protect Asters, Black-eyed Susans, Coneflowers and Milkweed
Rabbit-Resistant Native Plants
Although there are no absolute guarantees, some plants are typically avoided by rabbits, often due to their smell. See this article listing deer-repellant plants as they are also likely to be ignored by rabbits due to their strong scent.