Seems like every year brings me a new garden plague. This time, it’s bunnies.
Rabbits have always been plentiful in my neighborhood, their numbers providing endless entertainment for my two spaniels when I take them out for their daily stroll.
But until now, rabbits have never bothered the garden. This year all of the pansies and violets in the front garden have been nibbled. Rare native birdfoot violets were completely consumed – making them, at several dollars a pop, a very expensive rabbit green indeed.
The only rabbit I’ve ever actually encountered up-close and personal in the garden was a lop-ear who hopped up to me one day while I was weeding, obviously pleading to be rescued. When advertising did not turn up a frantic family missing their beloved pet, we decided that someone had intentionally set the poor thing “free.”
“Hasenpfeffer” subsequently became my oldest son’s pampered roommate. My family has always had pet rabbits and so is predisposed to think them cute. That is, until they began their recent assault.
Gardeners who regularly deal with deer and elk are not likely to feel much sympathy for my relatively minor siege by rabbits. But I’ve always viewed the lack of grazing ungulates as compensation for living out on the plains surrounded by a sea of subdivisions. We have no mountain view or natural forests and, consequently, no deer or elk. (I did once find a doe standing just beyond the fence line in my back yard. It looked as stunned to see a human as I was to see a deer.)
Raccoons have always been my most destructive animal pests. They dump rocks and plants into the pond in pursuit of goldfish, knock pots over presumably just for the heck of it and for an encore, spit grape skins and seeds all over the back patio. But unlike rabbits, raccoons are seasonal, appearing each autumn for a brief reign of terror and then going on their way again.
Last week I visited a friend in Pueblo whose lawn had been shredded by skunks digging for grubs, reminding me that I haven’t had a skunk visitor since I got rid of the lawn. Voles tormented other Front Range gardeners this past winter, burrowing away unmolested by fox or coyote beneath cover of snow. Rabbits are easy compared with skunks or voles, so I guess I should be grateful.
A 3-foot chain-link fence in the back yard, camouflaged by a more attractive cedar split rail fence, keeps dogs in and rabbits out. Both could dig under the barrier, but neither does. (Normally I curse the practical but unattractive chain-link, but I’ve come to appreciate its value in excluding rabbits.)
Friends tell me that they have had good luck with commercial repellants, so that is what I intend to try on the unprotected front garden. It will undoubtedly be tedious to apply and then reapply after every rainfall, but spraying beats other suggested options I’ve read, such as setting traps or encouraging the dogs to bark at the rabbits.
Marcia Tatroe is author of the forthcoming “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West,” due from Johnson Books this spring.
