I was reading the other day about the Iberian lynx. Apparently this rare and beautiful animal, native to Spain, is threatened with extinction. Its main food source is dying out. And what is this rare food? Rabbit, that's what.

Well, I've got good news for the Iberian lynx. If it's rabbits they're after, then I know just the place to find them: in our garden.

Until about six years ago we hardly ever saw a rabbit. It was so rare a sight that when we did see one we'd murmur, 'Ah. Look at that sweet little bunny.' Then our cat died peacefully, her 18 years of life clear proof of the benefits of a lapine diet. You could almost hear the rabbit population cheering as we buried her under the pear tree.

All right, they are sweet little animals. Watership Down and Peter Rabbit and countless other classic works of fiction have immortalised our love for them. Our grandson's face lights up when he sees one and he'd like nothing better than to play with them, if they'd let him. I can remember how I'd watch with pleasure as one sat up to wash its face, or hopped happily over the grass. Not any more.

That was before they ate all the leaves off the newly-planted blueberries, and destroyed the young kale plants, in a matter of days.

We could try growing things they won't eat. There are plants that are rabbit-proof - that is, rabbits don't like the taste, at least not once the plants are full grown (anything seems to do at the tender-greenshoot stage). But you can forget your herbacious borders glowing with colour and variety. You're stuck with daffodils, bluebells, euphorbias, those blue geraniums and a few herbs. That's about it.

And in any case, if they don't eat the plants, they'll still burrow under them. Rabbits could give lessons in engineering to any firm in the land. They never seem to stop. First, it was under the vegetable plot, so that the plants that hadn't been nibbled were tipped sideways or totally uprooted. Then they started on the flower beds.

My husband fills in holes as soon as he finds them, puts wire netting over the top, but still they burrow, if not in there, then just beside it.

We've tried the gardening books for advice. Surround everything with chicken wire, we're told, its lower edge dug deeply into the ground. But who wants to look at flower beds through chicken wire? And apart from the construction work involved, you've then got to make a gate so you can let yourself in - and won't they just slip under the gate (I seem to remember Peter Rabbit did exactly that)? One book even suggests a low-voltage electric fence. But we don't want a mini Berlin Wall. It's a garden, to be enjoyed.

Which I suppose means we'll just have to stop being choosy about who and what we enjoy it with. We can't put down the welcome mat for hedgehogs and birds, hoverflies and bees and ladybirds without getting a few unwelcome guests along with them. So it's going to have to be live-and-let-live, and be thankful for the few plants our visitors leave to us.

On second thoughts, maybe we should just regard the rabbits as an essential garden feature, to be actively enjoyed. After all, some people put cute little statues of bunnies in their gardens. We've got the real thing.