THE MODERN MINT BLOG
One Way to Deal with Rabbits in the Garden
When planting new borders at Waltham Place, the wonderful gardener Henk Gerritsen did this to stop rabbits from eating the new plants…
“It is a well known fact that once a perennial plant border has established itself, it becomes far less appealing for grazing animals, as young plants are much tastier.
In order to protect the new plantings, it was decided to scatter large quantities of seed of fast growing biennials, such as hemlock and woolly burdock. The first plant is so poisonous no animal would dare eat it…”
- Buddleja
- Cornus
- Cotoneaster
- Dogwood
- Escallonia
- Euonymus
- Ilex
- Laurel
- Laurus
- Philadelphus
- Pieris
- Rosemary
- Taxus
Perennials Rabbits May Not Eat:
- Aconitum
- Alchemilla
- Bergenia
- Crocosmia
- Epimedium
- Euphorbia
- Ferns
- Forget-me-not
- Foxgloves
- Hellebore
- Hemerocallis
- Iris
- Libertia
- Peony
- Persicaria
- Sedum
- Trillium
- Verbena
For a really great and far more comprehensive list, please try Spring Reach Nursery – rabbit proof plants.
Where does this leave us then?
Rabbit Proof Gardening
Members of the Iridaceae and Buttercup family are seemingly less tasty or poisonous, so you may want to fill your garden with them. If a plant is aromatic or exudes a milky sap, this may also help deter a rabbit. The list above proves there is still lots of great garden plants available to use, but we speak with this caveat – a rabbit may eat your plants even if they supposedly dislike it, because when hunger strikes…
The only 100% way to stop a rabbit eating the plants in your garden is to add a fence or get a border terrier. Or maybe try this Saluki?
Good luck defending your garden from rabbits!
And check out my main work on Topiary here.
EBTS Boxwood Growers Forum
Through the European Boxwood and Topiary Society I worked with Chris Poole and Sue Mesher, members of the EBTS board, and we set up a Boxwood Growers Forum. This was to discuss how to make sure this wonderful topiary plant stays in the public conscioussness – we know many growers, suppliers and distributors have stopped selling it as the cost of replacing boxwood that has blight, or is nibbled by the boxwood caterpillar, makes it unviable to offer to clients and gardeners. But Boxwood is a phoenix plant, and there are ways to deal with the problems associated with Buxus. …
Modern Topiarist @ Garden Masterclass Poland
My video on Modern Topiary for Garden Masterclass has been translated into Polish, for the keen gardeners (and happy pruners!) of Garedn Masterclass in Poland. Tickets for the first showing and q and a were available here. But it will become available on the Garden Masterclass Poland website at some point in the near future – so if you are a keen clipper and want to know more, but speak Polish and not English, then I suggest you visit the website and get watching. (Of course, if you don’t speak English, you may not be able to read this…. hmmm… …
Topiary Hotline
The European Boxwood & Topiary Society are to run a Topiary Hotline for keen gardeners and people who love to clip. Date is tomorrow, April 16th 2024, and you can get a ticket for the Zoom meeting here – Topiary Hotline. Run by Chris Poole and myself, we set this up as an antidote to the huge amount of questions we have to answer about topiary throughout the summer. The plus is that their is an excitement around topiary and pruning. The problem is we need to help people in a better way… … so we will be giving people …