How to Keep Rabbits Out of Your Garden.
Basically, how to protect your new native plants without declaring war on wildlife. Congratulations straightaway! You’ve presently installed a beautiful new native garden. Unfortunately, the bunnies have also received the announcement. How to Keep Rabbits Out of Your Garden?
Note: Independent expertise exists because of your support. Affiliate links help our small business at no extra cost to you.
A mature ecological garden can generally handle a lot of nibbling. A brand-new garden filled with comparatively young, tender plants? Obviously, not quite as much. Above all, the first growing season is the critical window. Your mission is not to altogether eliminate rabbits—it’s to make your new garden annoying enough that they eat somewhere else.
1. How to Keep Rabbits Out of Your Garden: Cage the Bunny Favorites.
If rabbits repeatedly target a particular plant, protect it immediately. Make 18–24-inch-tall cylinders from chicken wire or similar fencing and stake them securely. Leave enough width that a bunny can’t simply reach through the wire and eat the plant anyway.
2. Fence the Whole Garden.
If everything is becoming dinner, temporarily surround the planting with roughly 2-foot-high fencing. Secure the bottom carefully—bunnies are excellent at finding the one ridiculous little gap you missed.
3. Use Organic Spray Deterrents.
Organic rabbit-repellent sprays basically use unpleasant smells or tastes to discourage browsing on tender new plants. Spray vulnerable plants currently and reapply after heavy rain.
4. How to Keep Rabbits Out of Your Garden: Add Pinwheels.
Yes, certainly, pinwheels! Movement and flashes of reflected light can make a new garden feel less comfortable. Move them around periodically so rabbits don’t become accustomed to them.
5. Automate a Motion-Activated Sprinkler.
This is one of our favorites. Rabbit enters garden. Sensor detects rabbit. PSSSHHHHT!
No poison, trap or injured bunny. Just one extremely offended, slightly damp rabbit. Reposition the sprinkler periodically and automate it so protection continues when you aren’t watching.
6. Add Motion-Activated Lights.
Sudden light can add another layer of disturbance, especially during evening and nighttime browsing. Combine automated lights with sprinklers rather than relying on lights alone.
7. Give Them Something Better.
Consider allowing Dandelions, Horseweed and Red Clover to grow in a less precious area of the property. Rabbits generally love them. Think of this as experimental distraction planting: perhaps the salad bar doesn’t need to be located inside your showpiece garden.
8. Protect the Garden During Its Most Vulnerable Weeks.
The smallest plants need the most help. Keep barriers and deterrents in place while plants root, grow and gain substantial foliage.
9. Don’t Panic Over a Nibbled Plant.
A haircut isn’t necessarily a funeral. If the crown and roots remain healthy, many perennials will push new growth. Keep watering it.
10. Change Things Up.
Rabbits learn. Rotate deterrents, move pinwheels, reposition sprinklers and protect newly discovered favorites.
11. Remember the Actual Goal.
Your native garden is wildlife habitat. Eventually, there will be enough biomass that a rabbit eating a few leaves is simply ecology happening. For now? Protect the young plants. Confuse the bunnies. Live in reality and grow the habitat.
This article contains at least one affiliate link. Your purchase can help support independent expertise exist- thank you so much.
Suggested Products
