Bunnies in My Flowers

Spring has finally arrived in all of it’s beauty! I love this time of the year because it seems like a new beginning. I sit out on my porch and listen to all the birds sing, squirrels romp, and bunnies play.

I love to get on my hands and knees and dig in the dirt to plant vegetables but mostly to plant flowers. I have several places that I plant flowers and my favorite place is a wonderful flower bed built into the house near the front door. That’s the place where everyone coming to visit is greeted with all the lovely flowers.

This year, like all the previous years, I went and purchased my impatiens since they thrive in that area. I turned all the good soil over and added a little perlite to help with drainage. Then I ever so carefully pulled apart the plants and placed them in their new home. I gave them some fresh water and told them how I wanted them to grow big and strong.

They all looked so healthy and happy in the renewed flower bed and I couldn’t wait for company to come and enjoy them as much as I do.

A few days later I am leaving the house and much to my chagrin all I see are green plants with no pretty flowers. I almost lost it and forgot where I was going! If it had not been an important venture I would have turned right around to figure out what was going on. But investigating what happened would just have to wait until I returned.

The next morning I was sitting on my porch with a cup of coffee watching four baby bunnies playing in the back yard and BINGO, I knew just where my pretty pink and purple flowers had gone. To make absolutely sure, I monitored the front porch planter at different times of the day. Low and behold here comes momma rabbit with little ones behind her right up on my porch. The babies couldn’t get up on the planter, but their provider had no problem at all. And she was so kind to share what little was left on my plants.

So now I know what happened to my flowers and needed to figure out a way to keep the cute little rabbits in the back yard where they chomp on grass and we sometimes supply them with carrots and other little treats. Never before had they ever wandered in the front yard to strip the beauty from me. Maybe it’s a new breed of rabbit, or perhaps they were sick of carrots. Whatever the reason, I am determined to put a stop to their shenanigans.

I started searching for rabbit repelling or deterring solutions and was quite amazed at the number of remedies I found. Whether or not any of them work remains to be seen. I would rather use something that won’t hurt the bunnies but keep my flowers safe.

Mentioned on several sites was “get a dog.” That would be an option if I just didn’t like bunnies, but I do like the bunnies and find it quite relaxing to watch them play. Getting a dog would make the bunnies scatter to far away places. This is not the solution for me.

Several people said to “Just get a gun.” Now that, to me, is just downright evil. Perhaps if I was starving and needed to shoot a bunny for survival I could k… one, but I doubt it. I’d probably just eat grass, leaves or someones flowers.

Used cat litter was also suggested and would probably work. Big problem there is I don’t have a cat and I am not about to go knocking on doors to “borrow” cat litter.

I could install motion-detector lights to illuminate my plant bed. It might startle the rabbits easily and it would be nice for visitors, but that seems like way too much work for my little flower bed area. I’ll keep this one in the back of my mind just in case all else fails.

Someone else online suggested getting a rubber or plastic snake and putting it in the bed. Now that would be super simple but I’m a tad afraid it would scare my grand children and other little tykes that come over. And I don’t much like snakes and would hate for a real one to come and stay because it’s a snake “haven.” Check that one off the list.

Marigolds are a flower the bunnies don’t like, so I could plant some of those around the edges. If I did that I am afraid it would hide my pretty pink and purple impatiens.

I found several ideas for things you can spread around the area. Some of them workable in my world and some of them not for various reasons. You can spread items of clothing, old shoes (how attractive that would be), moth balls, garlic powder, cheap stinky soap (like Fels-Naptha), baby powder, hot pepper flakes, ground cloves, black pepper, fox urine (have fun getting that), blood meal, bone meal, cat hair, dog hair, human hair, and Liquid Fence. I am most certain that some of these would work just fine and I may have to try out a few of those options. If you try any of them, just remember that most of these need to be reapplied after every rain.

You can even dilute hot pepper sauce, put it in a spray bottle and apply it directly to the plants. I would really dilute it well because I wouldn’t want to injury the bunnies or their mother (or father). Cayenne pepper was also suggested, but it’s actually really bad for mammals’ mucus membranes and not really a humane way to keep them off my flowers or garden plants.

I did find several mentions and variations of an interesting homemade animal repellent recipe that I think will be my first choice to try.

It does contain Tabasco sauce, so I hope it won’t be too “hot” since the recipe also has a quart of water and other ingredients. Here is the recipe if you would also like to try it:

Mix in a spray bottle and apply on your plants.

Hopefully this will make dining on my beautiful impatiens much less appetizing for the bunnies. In a month or so I’ll let you know if it worked. And if it didn’t work, I’ll be sure to mention anything else I tried. I’m definitely on a quest to find the perfect bunny resistant formula to save my flowers.

Love the Bunnies and Happy Gardening!

Image of the rabbit above © Copyright Ann Harrison and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License