![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/nasturtium.jpg\" "\\"nasturtium")
<\/a># Photo by Andy Wright<\/p><\/div>\n
These are brilliant, lovely big flowers in bright yellows, peach, oranges and reds and big bright green leaves to set them off.\u00a0 The seeds are big (size of a small pea) so they are easy to sow and great for children to have a go with. They are also easy to grow, you can start them in pots or straight in the ground. If you let the seed pods ripen and collect them when the go brown you’ll have free seeds for next year too!<\/p>\n
They come in two types, bushes which funnily enough are bush shaped, and climbers which will ramble 6-8′ along the ground or up a fence, bamboo cane or rabbit run. The whole plant is rabbit (and human) safe, leaves, flowers and seed pods. The trouble with being so tasty is it has a tendency to be popular with caterpillars and little black flies but you can pinch off the leaves or just let the caterpillars do their thing and the plants will have another flush of leaves once they turn into butterflies. Mine flower from summer right up until the first frost.<\/p>\n
Pansy\/Viola<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/stock_pansy.jpg\" "\\"pansy")
<\/a># photo by aidswarrio<\/p><\/div>\n
Pansy flowers are a similar shape to nasturtiums but they come in an even bigger range of colours, from white to pink, red, blue, purple, yellow, orange etc. The plants themselves are smaller and more compact so they are great for hanging baskets or window boxes.\u00a0 Pansy’s are a little more tricky to grow from seed but they are very commonly available as plug plants so you can cheat and just plant them out. You can also get ‘winter pansy’s’ in autumn which, in the UK at least, will flower through winter in a sheltered spot.<\/p>\n
Pot Marigold (Calendula officinalis)<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/stock_calendula.jpg\" "\\"calendula")
<\/a># photo by Brian Ballard<\/p><\/div>\n
There are two types of marigold – Pot\/English Marigolds (Calendula officinalis)\u00a0 and French\/African Marigolds (Tagetes). It’s the Pot Marigolds that are rabbit safe. They are big orange and yellow flowers – often sold as cut flowers, so good if you want something to pop in a vase inside that you don’t need to panic over when Scamp jumps the table, hops across a book shelf and sniffs the flowers with his teeth. Not that he would ever do that!<\/p>\n
They are easy to grow, and again, the seeds are quite big and easy to save from year to year. They seem to self seed well too – I can see some young plants that germinated last autumn and hung around the winter – they’ll probably be some of the first flowers open when the weather warms up and I’ll sow more to flower a bit later so we get them through to autumn. They grow from about 6″ to 2′ depending on the variety so read the seed packet to make sure they’ll fit the space you have.<\/p>\n
Peas<\/h2>\n
<\/a># photo by aidswarrio<\/p><\/div>\n
Pansy flowers are a similar shape to nasturtiums but they come in an even bigger range of colours, from white to pink, red, blue, purple, yellow, orange etc. The plants themselves are smaller and more compact so they are great for hanging baskets or window boxes.\u00a0 Pansy’s are a little more tricky to grow from seed but they are very commonly available as plug plants so you can cheat and just plant them out. You can also get ‘winter pansy’s’ in autumn which, in the UK at least, will flower through winter in a sheltered spot.<\/p>\n
Pot Marigold (Calendula officinalis)<\/h2>\n<\/a># photo by Brian Ballard<\/p><\/div>\n
There are two types of marigold – Pot\/English Marigolds (Calendula officinalis)\u00a0 and French\/African Marigolds (Tagetes). It’s the Pot Marigolds that are rabbit safe. They are big orange and yellow flowers – often sold as cut flowers, so good if you want something to pop in a vase inside that you don’t need to panic over when Scamp jumps the table, hops across a book shelf and sniffs the flowers with his teeth. Not that he would ever do that!<\/p>\n
They are easy to grow, and again, the seeds are quite big and easy to save from year to year. They seem to self seed well too – I can see some young plants that germinated last autumn and hung around the winter – they’ll probably be some of the first flowers open when the weather warms up and I’ll sow more to flower a bit later so we get them through to autumn. They grow from about 6″ to 2′ depending on the variety so read the seed packet to make sure they’ll fit the space you have.<\/p>\n
Peas<\/h2>\n
<\/a># photo by Brian Ballard<\/p><\/div>\n
There are two types of marigold – Pot\/English Marigolds (Calendula officinalis)\u00a0 and French\/African Marigolds (Tagetes). It’s the Pot Marigolds that are rabbit safe. They are big orange and yellow flowers – often sold as cut flowers, so good if you want something to pop in a vase inside that you don’t need to panic over when Scamp jumps the table, hops across a book shelf and sniffs the flowers with his teeth. Not that he would ever do that!<\/p>\n
They are easy to grow, and again, the seeds are quite big and easy to save from year to year. They seem to self seed well too – I can see some young plants that germinated last autumn and hung around the winter – they’ll probably be some of the first flowers open when the weather warms up and I’ll sow more to flower a bit later so we get them through to autumn. They grow from about 6″ to 2′ depending on the variety so read the seed packet to make sure they’ll fit the space you have.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/stock_purplepea.jpg\" "\\"edible")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/stock_sunflower.jpg\" "\\"sunflower")
<\/a>