How to Keep Rabbits Out of Your Garden: 9 Wildlife-Friendly Tips

Learn how to keep rabbits out of your garden with these humane methods.

Few garden plants are safe when rabbits invade. To protect your vegetables, fruits, and flowers, you have several options for how to keep rabbits out of your garden. In North America alone, there are about 15 types of native rabbits and hares, but the eastern cottontail is the species you’re most likely to encounter. Whichever species you’re dealing with, this guide covers how to identify rabbit damage and wildlife-friendly ways to stop rabbits from eating your plants.

Identifying Rabbit Damage

Rabbits are relatively secretive animals that tend to avoid human contact, and the plant damage they cause can look a lot like the damage caused by deer, groundhogs, and other larger pests. To figure out if you’re dealing with rabbits, even if you never see the creatures themselves, look for these telltale signs:

• Disappearing produce. Insect pests usually riddle plant leaves with holes, but rabbits have much larger appetites. If your lettuce plants are chewed down to nubs or your strawberries have vanished overnight, you may be dealing with rabbits.
• Damaged plants. Rabbits, groundhogs, and deer don’t always devour the entire plant, and they sometimes chew off plant leaves or mow plants down to the soil line. Rabbits and groundhogs usually feed on leaves at the base of the plant, while deer damage typically occurs higher up.
• Rabbit pellets. If you see rounded, pelleted scat in your garden, it was likely produced by either deer or rabbits. Groundhog scat, on the other hand, is usually a bit bigger and isn’t as uniform in size.
• Nibbled bark. Rabbits and deer sometimes chew on the tender bark around the base of young trees and shrubs, but deer cause more damage, and they also eat small branches and twigs.
• Digging. Unlike European rabbits, most North American rabbits don’t dig extensive tunnel networks or warrens in the soil. However, they will dig small holes or depressions for nesting. If large tunnels appear in your garden, groundhogs are likely to blame.

Related: What’s Eating My Basil? 7 Pests That Could Be the Cause

Tips for Keeping Rabbits Out of Your Garden

Many rabbits content themselves with nibbling on weeds and clover in lawn grass and never venture into vegetable gardens and flowerbeds. However, if rabbits are causing problems, these tips will help you make your garden less appealing to rabbits and encourage them to move along on their own.

1. Tidy Up

Rabbits are more likely to stick around gardens that provide them with a ready source of delicious vegetables and safe shelter. If you want to keep rabbits from moving in, start by doing a good garden cleanup.

To reduce food sources, rake up windfallen fruit and cover vulnerable vegetables with row covers. You may also want to remove sheltering spots by cleaning up brush and log piles, pruning back overgrown shrubs and trees, blocking off crawlspaces beneath porches and outbuildings, and regularly trimming long grass. Just be sure to check crawlspaces for critters before sealing them up, and avoid mowing grassy areas if you suspect rabbits are actively nesting.

2. Install Fencing

Adding fencing can take some work, but it is the best way to permanently keep rabbits out of your garden and yard. For best results, install chicken wire or hardware cloth fencing around the perimeter of your garden so that the bottom 6 inches of fencing is buried in the soil and at least 3 feet of fencing is above the soil line. Then, angle the top 6 to 12 inches of fencing away from your garden to make it harder for rabbits to jump over.

3. Try Other Barriers

If fencing isn’t possible, you can keep rabbits off specific plants with smaller barriers. Rabbits mainly target new plant growth and are less likely to feed on mature plants, so try protecting bulbs and young seedlings by creating a simple dome from chicken wire and placing it over your beds. Plants should be able to grow through the mesh, but you can remove the barrier when your plants are past the seedling stage.

Alternatively, you can install cloches or plant cages over individual plants. In a pinch, old gallon-size or larger nursery pots with the bottoms removed can serve as a plant collar to protect vulnerable perennials. Tree guards around the base of young trees and shrubs also help keep rabbits at bay, but make sure to use guards that are several inches taller than rabbits can reach when standing on their back legs.

4. Grow Rabbit-Proof Plants

Hungry rabbits will eat just about anything, so it’s hard to find truly rabbit-proof plants. However, if you regularly struggle to keep rabbits out of your garden, choosing plants that rabbits are less likely to munch on can make your gardening experience less stressful and reduce the chances of rabbit damage. Some of the best plants to grow in rabbit-prone areas include:

• Yarrow
• Lamb’s ear
• Daffodils
• Peonies
• Grape hyacinth
• Potatoes
• Bleeding heart
• Mint
• Lupines
• Foxglove

Tip

Plants that are “deer proof” or “resistant to Japanese beetles” are also worth a try. Rabbits, deer, and Japanese beetles tend to avoid the same plants.

5. Choose Repellent Plants

While rabbits are less likely to eat rabbit-proof plants, some scented plants repel rabbits from gardens. Scented herbs, like rosemary and thyme, fall into this category, as do chives, onions, garlic, and oregano. Try growing these plants around the perimeter of your garden or use them as companion plants for vulnerable crops like brassicas and strawberries and flowers such as petunias, tulips, and sunflowers.

6. Sow Clover

Distraction is sometimes the best option when it comes to deterring garden pests, and nothing distracts rabbits quite like clover. Overseeding parts of your lawn with clover seeds in spring can provide rabbits with so much food that they might not feed on your vegetables and flowers again. Dutch white clover and microclover are the sturdiest clover options for lawn use, but you can also experiment with patches of ornamental crimson clover or red clover for extra color.

7. Apply Repellents

Gardeners can find lots of products that supposedly repel rabbits, but some of these repellents work better than others, and most need to be reapplied regularly and after heavy rain. Blood meal, dog fur, garlic oil, human hair, cayenne powder, predator urine, and putrescent egg solids are all commonly used as rabbit deterrents.

8. Use Scare Tactics

Place pinwheels around your garden or install a motion-activated sprinkler and some plastic snake or owl decoys. To boost your chances of success, move these items around your garden occasionally and use them in conjunction with fencing and repellents.

9. Try Trapping

Trapping and relocating rabbits is usually ineffective because new rabbits often move in and take the place of any rabbits you remove. However, if you need to remove rabbits, always wear gloves and check local rules and regulations before you start. Trapping and relocation are prohibited in some areas.

If you’re determined to relocate rabbits, select an appropriately sized live trap and bait it with fresh produce, like apples or carrots. Place the live trap in an area where you know rabbits are active, and check the trap regularly to ensure rabbits don’t stay confined for long. After you capture a rabbit, handle the cage carefully and quickly release the rabbit at least five miles away from human habitation so the rabbit become a pest for someone else.

Tips

Never attempt to relocate rabbit nests on your own, as young rabbits are very delicate. Baby rabbits are only in the nest for about three to five weeks. If a nest is in an unsafe spot where baby bunnies are likely to be disturbed by humans or dogs, block off the area with temporary fencing or contact a wildlife rehabber.

Related: 19 Rabbit and Deer-Resistant Container Plants for Your Garden

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