Sheena Patterson of Oxford Garden Design on why gardening is good

Everywhere I look there seem to be bunnies at the moment.

Lurking on top of our kitchen cupboard are a couple of chocolate varieties, destined for delicious destruction in the morning.

As I gaze out of the kitchen window my eye alights on Mr and Mrs Rabbit, residents of Delly End, Oxfordshire, and their numerous children, cousins, aunts, uncles and various other distant relatives.

As a gardener, this is not a delightfully desirable sight for my eyes. I wish their destruction was as easy as that of the chocolate.

Since ancient times, rabbits have been associated with spring and it’s thought that the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring, Oestre or Eastre had a hare as her companion, symbolising fertility and rebirth.

Our words for the female hormone oestrogen derives from her name.

Later Christians changed the symbol to the Easter bunny. Oestre was a fertility goddess, bringing in the end of winter, with a passion for new life.

The rabbit (well known for its propensity for rapid reproduction) was her sacred animal.

All my life I’ve considered rabbits quite cute, relatively harmless little creatures. But since we’ve become neighbours, I’m sorry to report that Mr and Mrs Rabbit and I have had a serious and irreparable fall-out.

The problem with having a colony of rabbits in situ is their voracious appetite for most things green.

If you have rabbits in your garden you can forget planting anything remotely ‘interesting’ because the rabbits will agree with you and eat it the night after you plant it.

I now know what the expression ‘breeding like rabbits’ means. The doe has no regular cycle of coming into heat and she can ovulate at any time of the year in response to the advances of a buck.

Consequently she can become pregnant up to 10 times a year.

The outcome of all this outrageous fun and games is everywhere to be seen in my back garden which we jokingly call Watership Down.

As a teenager I recall being close to tears after watching the plight of Hazel, Fiver and co. as they struggled to survive the destruction of their warren.

Surely I wasn’t alone in feeling mournful at the sound of Art Garfunkel’s Bright Eyes? But now I’m a firmly cynical grown-up and definitely on the side of the farmer who shot the rabbit.

The breeding season is now well under way in our garden and my newly planted vegetables are threatened. In theory dogs are a good deterrent for ridding your garden of rabbits.

However, I would not recommend either a golden retriever or black labrador as pest control officers. It so happens that my dogs are best friends with Mr and Mrs Rabbit and co.

So a dog-walking friend has volunteered his lurcher as chief exterminator. The method involves roaming at night with a torch. As the rabbits freeze in the light, he releases the hound, which chases and (sometimes) catches the bunnies.

Apparently dog-caught rabbits are favoured by game dealers, as the skin is unbroken and they are free of tooth-cracking shot.

I confess to being squeamish at the thought of rabbit stew, fresh out of the garden, for our Easter Sunday lunch. So for now the bunnies are safe.