A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion Plant pests and problems Not exactly insects or disease....

Well, this winter we got really heavy snowfall and it stayed on the ground quite late into the season. It must have buried most of their normal food because the wild rabbits that live in our area almost completely ate my hedge bushes, as well as my neighboor's almost brand new Cedars.

My bushes were two years old; when I moved in the hedge in the back was missing three bushes which I assume had died at some point, so we planted them. They are bridal-wreath Spirea.

Virtually every twig has been eaten right off the smaller bushes (and the bottoms of the larger ones). Now that they are budding we have found a few buds on each plant (exactly five on the middle one).

So I have two questions.

First, are the plants salvageable? Will they send up new shoots or something and grow back? If so, what's the best way to help them do this?

Second, whether I try to salvage these ones or plant new ones, what's the best way to protect them from wild rabbits? We have a ton of them in our area.

Here are pictures. They are about 2 Mb each so I am just putting links.

http://www.chrisandheidi.com/bush1.jpg
http://www.chrisandheidi.com/bush2.jpg
http://www.chrisandheidi.com/bush3.jpg

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Cut back any badly damaged branches, make sure they get watered. You could give them a light feeding with liquid fertilizer, but don't overdo it. They'll probably be fine, they're tough, and most of the life is actually in the root system anyway.
I can't advise you on the rabbits...maybe they'll have tastier things to munch on now that winter's over.

Thanks, how far down should I cut the completely dead ones? Like, almost to the ground?

It's up to you, they'll grow back. You could check to see how much is still alive by gently scratching the bark...if there is green just under the surface, that's live tissue. Anything that's heavily damaged would be better cut away, though, below the damaged part. If you have to cut back to the ground, that's fine. You're actually better off cutting a little more than less, don't sweat it. If the roots are healthy, the plant will be fine.

This was a very bad problem in this are over the winter as well.
Your spirea, should bounce back with not much of a problem at all. Just prune back any rough breaks in the branches. Your neighbors cedars however, do have such a great prognosis. When cedars are eaten back beyond the green, they will take years, if they ever do recover. They may send up additional top growth but outward growth in the damaged areas is going to be around for a while. Sometimes the plants will develop a thick dense growth that comes out a few inch's from the trunk, but does not really amount to much. To keep the critters away, there are a wide variety of different types of sprays that you can use. Personally I do not like using the "hot sauce" types. They work fine, but can be very dangerous to use, as they can cause sever eye irritation, landing the applicator in the hospital, hooked up to some medieval looking torture device to cleanse the eyes. (Yes this is from personal experience and that was just from getting some of the product on my hands while moving a closed box of it, and rubbing my eyes at a later time.) The two that I like the best are Treeguard, and Ropel. There is another type called Liquid Fence that after repeated applications keeps the critters at bay. The other possibility is using the black nylon netting. This usually does a pretty good job at keeping the animals from eating your landscape.