Protecting Downbeach Gardens from Rascally Rabbits

How to deal with those lovable, but ravenous rabbits in Longport, Margate and Ventnor?

It’s all about ‘rabbit resistant’ plants, says Tom Subranni, chairman of the Longport Green Team.

Downbeach rabbits are multiplying like uh… rabbits. Seems to be getting worse each passing year.

Why so many wascally wabbits? Could be a mix of:

  • Human encroachment on habitat
  • Lack of natural predators
  • Neighborhood buffet of delicious plants and flowers.

Rabbits are cute, lovable and intelligent. They’re also destroyers of beautiful and expensive flowers. Colorful gardens significantly enhance the beauty of Longport, says Subranni.

It’s a love-hate relationship for many. If hungry enough, rabbits will eat just about anything.

How best to protect plants from rabbits and mitigate damage to flowers and landscaping?

Rabbit proof and rabbit resistant plants.

Four categories of defense mechanisms, developed over millions of years to ward off herbivores:

Plant toxins: rabbits avoid plants with toxins called alkaloids, especially those with sappy or oozing stems.

Plant thorns: rabbits avoid plants with sharp thorns. Yucca is an example of a rabbit proof plant with jagged, prickly and spiky leaves.

Plant taste and aroma: rabbits avoid plants with bitter orvaromatic leaves; lavender and chamomile.

Plant texture: Rabbits avoid plants with hairy, wooly or cactus-like leaves; portulaca.

Rabbits will avoid certain plants some years and joyfully consume them in others, just as if they preferred a variety in their diet.

Young rabbits are curious. They tend to sample many plants, even ones reputed to be rabbit resistant. All rabbits prefer young, tender shoots, even if the same mature plant is rabbit resistant.

Gardeners should experiment with plants. Plant two or three having defense characteristics and protect one or two with chicken wire. If rabbits don’t attack the unprotected one, you have discovered a rabbit resistant plant – at least for the current year.

List of rabbit proof and rabbit resistant plants. Note: an asterisk denotes rabbit proof plants gleaned from 40 years of personal gardening experience in Longport. A named plant with no asterisk denotes reportedly rabbit resistant. Tom Subranni, Chairman Longport Green Team.

  • Alliums – ornamental onion-taste
  • Anemone
  • Artemisia
  • Astilbe – taste
  • * Basil – taste
  • Butterfly bush
  • * Barberry bush – needle sharp thorns and barbarine toxin
  • * Caladiums-texture
  • Catmint – taste
  • * Chamomile-taste
  • Chrysanthemum – toxin – high levels of pyrethrins, a common ingredient in insecticides.
  • Coreopsis-daisy-toxin
  • Daffodils – toxin
  • Foxglove (digitalis) – highly toxic – known at “dead man’s bells.”
  • * Gardenia – taste
  • * Geraniums – aromatic
  • * Hydrangea
  • Lantana – rabbits sometimes change their diet and eat this plant.
  • *Lavender – aromatic
  • *Nightshade (including tomatoes and eggplant) –Toxins – amygdalion breaks down to produce cyanide. Tomato leaf contain solanines.
  • Ornamental pepper – taste
  • *Portulaca – cactus-like succulent leaves and stems
  • Rhododendrons
  • *Sage and Russian sage – aromatic
  • *Salvia – taste
  • *Sedums – cactus-like succulent leaves and stems
  • Smoke bush
  • Spurge
  • *Vinca – toxins and leathery leaves-texture
  • Wax begonia
  • Wolfsbane – toxic and all plants ending in “bane.”
  • Yarrow – aromatic
  • Yarrow – aromatic leaves
  • Yellow irises – highly toxic
  • Zinnias

Many Longport residents hire professional landscape companies who keep up-to-date on the latest rabbit diet.

Be Sustainable – Tom Subranni, Longport Green Team Leader


The Borough of Longport is a member of the Sustainable Jersey program and achieved bronze certification in 2016.

Sustainable Jersey is a nonprofit organization that provides tools, training and financial incentives to support communities as they pursue sustainability programs.

Longport has a local Green Team Advisory Committee comprised of local residents, officials and municipal employees. The team, Sustainable Longport, has undertaken the mission to educate residents and visitors of the borough’s efforts to protect and conserve our natural resources, reduce waste, conserve energy and leave a better tomorrow for future generations to enjoy.

5 thoughts on “Protecting Downbeach Gardens from Rascally Rabbits”

  1. I’ve had a vegetable / herb & flower garden garden for 43 yrs. but this was the 1 st year I had to close in parts of it with chicken wire to keep the rabbits out. They eat just about everything. Fortunately, they don’t seem to relish tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash or melons.

  2. I used garlic this year for first time. Peeled garlic then sliced to promote more scent. Put in tiny burlap bags (Amazon).
    Seemed to work. Less damage than any other year.
    I only grow flowers , no vegetables.

  3. Rabbits don’t seem to eat my tomato plants, regardless of the variety, but they LOVE the tiny leaves of my just-sprouted green beans, so I surround those with chicken wire.

  4. I only have a tiny front flower garden but found that many flowering plants including marigolds, heliotroplum and lantana (which most plant advisors suggest rabbits don’t like) have been relentlessly munched, even with chicken wire, where the tiny babies rabbits seem to be able to get through!

    I have had success with New Guinea impatients, regular impatients, geraniums, Rosemary (the herb, which slightly yields tiny purple flowers), hydrangeas, lavender, bee balm and begonias. Also, I recommend the very hardy braceteatha, which are like a colorful flower thistle.

    Those rabbits ate heartedly my roses, all my petunias, Johnny-jump ups, and as mentioned above, marigold, lantana and in early spring-the early flowering crocuses and tulip buds!

    PS. Several times, I tumbled from my bike severing while getting on/off and while on the Ventnor Boardwalk from scared rabbits darting around!

    They run all over the beach in Margate (I saw them aplenty at the fireworks on July 4) and on the Ventnor beaches in the dunes.

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