Everyone I know who has the garden fences it off to keep the animals out. That seems a little unneighborly to me. Certainly, if some critters are decimating your garden, you should take some action. But, so what if you have to make do without 10% of your garden? Is it really worth the extra trouble? And, perhaps, is nature doing something that you don't realize?
I've never spent too much time worrying about pests. The neighborhood bunnies, last year, had their way with our tomatoes, so much so that I had to pick them while they were still green in order to get anything to eat.
However, a wonderful thing happened. Because the bunnies had eaten so many tomatoes, they had also spread around hundreds of tomato seeds! So, this year, all over my yard, tomato plants are springing up! Now, a lot of these are weeds - they are growing in a spot being used for some other purpose. But I'm going to let a lot of them go, and be thankful for the bunnies who ate last years tomatoes, but whose appetite actually multiplied my abundance of tomato plants this year.
This year, I've expanded my garden quite a bit, and added collards. Well, so far, the bunnies have left everything else alone - even the lettuce - and focused on the collards. I let them have them - if they take one crop and leave the others, why not live in peace? And, I found in the last few days that the collards are now growing strong. The bunnies knew how to eat the collards so that they kept growing well!
So, the bunnies, rather than being a pest, are actually helping my gardening efforts. Perhaps we would be wiser if, instead of trying to find ways to cage our plants away from the bunnies, we thought of ways to channel the bunny-power into spreading our seeds where we want them to. Maybe we should teach ourselves to live with nature, not against it.