My friend gave up coneflower due to rabbits damage. But you might be right if planting a big mature plant might be helpful. The leaves feel very hard and coarse to touch. Inwish you luck since coneflower reallyis a very beautiful plant

I have same struggle. I grew coneflowers, no problems, in former house nearby WITH heavy deer & rabbit presence, but in my new house , my coneflowers get chomped. Still having trouble getting past that because I was so counting on them for a flowering, self- seeding plant for tough conditions. It does seem that a few I have that are sort of “ hidden” within other flowers and then get their blooming stems up are less bothered, but that is probably hit or miss. Trying Rudbeckia, but that may also get chomped. Yarrows work well, but have to have my sunniest spots, whereas coneflowers seem to be wonderfully tolerant of part sun/ high shade, which is a lot of areas.

prairie, could you devise a cage of rabbit fencing to put around your baby coneflowers so they might get to maturity?

My rabbit problem right now is giving me thoughts of rabbit stew and other culinary "delights". Just kidding... I think.

Hmmmm… my rabbits have never touched my echinacea. Mine prefer clover, violet leaves, liatris tips before flowering, and ox-eye daisies. :)

Well, I am definitely going to try getting a big mature flowering plant at the nursery and see if they will ignore it.

I have started listing plants that they ignore and I’m trying to grow more of those, but some plants you just want and the rabbits have to obey…lol. That’s all there is to it. :-)

Roxanna - I will try to put something around the small echinacea for awhile and see if that helps.

We are in rabbit city here. I was out front this morning, mulching and all of a sudden I heard a commotion, looked up and three rabbits came charging out from behind a shrub 10ft away, chasing each other and then going in 3 different directions when they saw me. [g] and we see that we have TWO rabbit nests in the backyard. And this is despite having a fenced in yard. They find a way in. I just couldn’t put the work in to make my fencing impregnable.

They don’t eat Foxglove or Aquilegia. Or Dicentra. Or Daffs, snowdrops and hyacinths. They leave my grasses alone and my Mums. I know there are more, that is just off the top of my head. They wiped out 3/4 of my Epimedium two years ago. And Hostas seem to be their favorite. 'June' doesn't seem to interest them for some reason. I think it has thicker leaves?

A lot of rabbits this year. I’d have to give up echinacea,garden mums, burnets, and other plantsif I did not spray with rabbit repellent early in the season . Pm,i have noticed there are plants they dont bother when the plant is big and beefy, but will repeatedly decimate when it is young and tender. i feel defeated and sometimes irrational rage when a newly purchased or emerging plant disappears over night.

Yes, Marie, a LOT of rabbits this year, but I guess I say that every year. [g]

They don't pay much attention to my Mums, they have sometimes eaten most of the leaves off the lilies. This year I noticed they are eating the native lilies but hardly touched the others. Now I have a baby bunny camped out in my front bed who seems to enjoy nipping off flower stems, and leaving them on the ground.

I walked around the garden tonight making a list of plants that the rabbits seem to ignore.... I thought of 7 more...

Iris / Amsonia / Sedum / California Poppy / Dark leaved Penstemon / Basket of Gold / Nepeta.

I wondered who was eating my coneflowers. Then I saw the culprit…

DFan - How sweet is that! All the critters like coneflowers...lol. They must be a treat! I guess they're going for a good cause. :-)

The Rabbits are branching out into my roses. They will eat the bottom foliage up to 2ft off the gorund. A really ugly effect. You'd think the thorns would discourage them. All the baby coneflowers I planted are stems with no leaves. I've taken to using a very large container of Cayenne Pepper powder around all their favorites. I'm waiting to see if it helps. I've bought clover to reseed the lawn, to give them something else to eat, but I've missed the spring weather to get that done. Maybe in the fall.

Rabbits ate my coneflowers two years ago and they didn’t grow back the next year. And I unfortunately found that store-purchased repellents didn’t really help. They also ate heliopsis to the ground and some annual helianthus. Very frustrating!!

This year I purchased a small fence from Amazon. It may be too short, but so far so good. I bought it after the magnus coneflowers I planted last year started to be nibbled on shortly after they emerged this spring.

Good luck, I hope the cayenne pepper helps!

LMCorgi - I looked at that same fencing and because I thought it wasn't going to be tall enough I skipped it. So I will be interested to hear how that does. I'm going to think about if I could add that kind of fencing strategically to protect varied plants and still look decent.

I still had a big bottle of Cayenne pepper and I am trying it on the areas they have been nibbling on. I just started trying it. I know other years it hasn't worked, but it seems to me every year you get different bunnies...lol. I know irrational.

This morning when I walked out my front door, thee was a large bunny on the walkway at the bottom of my steps. I have two new coneflowers that I have been waiting to plant to see if I find a solution to the rabbits. I've been bringing them inside at night - 2 pots - last night I forgot and they were on my front steps. That rabbit was not easy to scare away. I walked toward him and he casually hopped 2 hops. I had to chase him quite a distance before he actually ran off my property. I looked and sure enough he had chewed on the leaves of the conelower on my steps. Very bold!

I went in the backyard and a baby bunny ran off in one direction and there was an adult rabbit that again I had to chase to get him out. Useless, I know, they come right back. I went to water and refill the birdbaths and I see they continue to chew on a lot of my hostas. At first there was only one that they chewed down to the ground. But even my 'June' which they usually leave alone. The leaves are thicker?, and they are chewing all the outer leaves of that and others. They chomped the top of a new lily that I planted this year. They've started on the lower folage on some of my roses. They love my yard.

I am sad to report that the cute little fence shown above did not keep the rabbits out, here is the evidence of their damage. 😭

Now I have to figure something else out, or the rest of my echinacea and heliopsis will be in peril. These little stinkers!!!

LMCorgi - Oh too bad! I was actually planning on looking for this thread today to ask you how your fence worked out. I was thinking of getting some of them. *sigh* I have not planted more echinacea. They're still sitting in pots on my steps and then they chewed them....came up 3 steps to get at them. So I keep moving them into the front entry way, where they get some sun and air. I'm planning to pot them up in a large container with some other perennials to see if that will help.

This morning I came out and....they chewed down a tall Lily that had buds getting ready to open. grrrrr! I thought I was safe because they chewed a little of the bottom leaves but haven't for a few weeks. And they were chewing my roses. Some they ignore and some they are trying to take all the foliage off the bottom. I just came in the house from putting down more cayenne pepper. I'm still not sure if that helps or not. It hasn't been easy to keep it applied when we have rain a lot. I'm out of it now and will wait to see what effect this has, and if it helps I'm ordering more.

So how do you think they got in to your fenced area? Did they hop over it or dig under it? I am thinking that bunnies that were born in the spring are now getting big enough to get up on their hind legs and reach a good distance. But they'd have to have a good landing spot to jump in, right? So what do you think you'll do next?

I am still observing which plants they never touch. I'll post a list when I get a chance. I bought some Hollyhock starts in the spring and so far, no rust and no rabbit damage. They've got buds forming.

Oh boy. The babies really can get through small spaces. I have a new picket fence and even the big bunnies just shoot right through between the pickets. I saw those fence panels you got and thought they were attractive and almost got them, but thought maybe they would be too short. I did buy a big roll of 1/4 inch hardware cloth but I haven't worked out a way to put them in that I like the look of. So I used it to surround 3 new baby trees we planted this spring. They are just eating some of my hostas down to the ground, a little at a time. Even 'June' which they have not touched in previous years. I've stopped buying new hostas or dividing those I have. IF I get the opportunity to, I'm going to try to add some hardware cloth to see if I can keep them out of our back yard all together. It will take a lot to do that, but it might be worth it. They seem to love everything I grow and they are nesting in my yard.

So sorry you are struggling with them too!!