Rabbit-Resistant Plants for Minnesota Yards (and How to Protect the Rest)

Rabbits in the Twin Cities reliably leave junipers, spruce, zone-4 boxwood, yew, potentilla, Russian sage, peony, daylily, catmint and most ornamental grasses alone. They reliably chew arborvitae, serviceberry, spirea, Korean lilac, redtwig dogwood, young maples, viburnum, roses, coneflower and hosta. The single most useful move in a browsed yard is choosing junipers over arborvitae for privacy — everything else is fencing.

This matters more in Minnesota than almost anywhere else, and the reason is snow. An eastern cottontail is light enough to walk on top of packed snow instead of sinking into it, so every inch of snowpack raises its reach. By February in a normal Twin Cities winter, a rabbit is feeding eighteen to twenty-four inches above your soil line, at a height it could never touch in July. Damage that looks inexplicable in April was ordinary in January.

This article is about plant selection — what rabbits actually browse versus what they walk past, how their preferences differ from deer preferences (they are not the same list), and how to build a planting that assumes rabbits are present. We already have a full guide to barriers and hardware, so this one covers protection briefly and sends you there for the details.

The damage that starts every rabbit conversation

We look at arborvitae screens every spring, and a large share of those calls are the same photo: a run of green columns with the bottom two to three feet stripped bare, cut off at a flat line like somebody ran a hedge trimmer along the base. Above the line the plants look fine. Below it, brown twigs and trunk.

That line is the previous winter's packed snow depth. Rabbits stood on it and ate every needle they could reach. And here is the part homeowners do not expect: arborvitae does not push new foliage out of bare old wood. Unlike a spirea or a dogwood, which will resprout from the base after being chewed to the ground, a stripped arborvitae trunk stays stripped. The plant lives. The screen does not come back. You have a permanent bald skirt at exactly the height that mattered — the height where your neighbor's driveway is.

In a hard winter they do not stop at foliage. Rabbits chew bark, and a stem girdled all the way around at the snow line is dead above the girdle — on a multi-stem arborvitae that shows up as one or two whole columns browning out the following July while the rest looks fine. That observation is why our default privacy recommendation on browsed sites is not arborvitae.

How to tell rabbit damage from deer damage from vole damage

Before you change your plant list, confirm what is actually eating your yard. All three animals are active in a Twin Cities winter and all three leave different signatures.

The 45-degree cut is the most reliable single tell — rabbits clip cleanly at an angle, deer tear. If you find neat angled cuts on stems under three feet with round droppings nearby, you have rabbits, and no amount of deer repellent is going to help.

Rabbits and deer do not eat the same plants

This is the point most Minnesota plant lists get wrong. "Deer-resistant" and "rabbit-resistant" get printed on the same tag as if they were interchangeable. There is real overlap — juniper and spruce are unpopular with both — but there are also plants one animal ignores and the other treats as a food plot.

Yew is the clearest illustration. Iowa State University Extension rates it seldom damaged by rabbits, and it is one of the safest evergreens in a rabbit-heavy yard — while being one of the plants deer strip first. Same plant, opposite answers. Figure out which animal you have before you shop.

Woody plants rabbits usually leave alone in Minnesota

Rabbit resistance in woody plants comes down to resinous or aromatic foliage, tough bark, and toxicity. These are what we plant most often on properties with visible rabbit runs.

• Junipers. The most useful plant on this list. The scaly, resinous, prickly foliage is a real deterrent, not a marketing claim, and it works on deer and rabbits both. Taylor Juniper and Sky Rocket Juniper are the narrow columns for screening, and Star Power Juniper is a third screening option — a gold-tipped form that matures at 15 to 18 feet. All three grow roughly 6 to 12 inches a year here, slower than arborvitae.
• Spruce. Black Hills Spruce is essentially ignored by rabbits. Stiff needles are unappealing and the bark toughens fast.
• Zone-4 boxwood. Green Velvet, Green Mountain, Chicagoland Green and Northern Charm. Rated seldom damaged. Their Minnesota problem is winter sun and wind, not animals — screen them from south and west exposure the first two winters.
• Yew. Taunton Spreading Yew — rabbit-safe, deer candy. Use it inside a fence.
• Smooth hydrangea. Annabelle Hydrangea is rated seldom damaged, and it has a second layer of insurance: it blooms on new wood, so even if a rabbit clips stems in a hard winter, the spring cutback you were going to do anyway erases the damage and the plant blooms on schedule.
• Potentilla, Russian sage, cotoneaster. Aromatic or wiry, consistently on the seldom-damaged side of extension rating lists.
• Established ornamental grasses. Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grass and Little Bluestem are not rabbit food once established, though rabbits nibble tender new shoots on a first-year clump.

Woody plants rabbits reliably chew

We stock most of these and they are good plants. We are not telling you to skip them — we are telling you they need a hardware cloth cylinder for their first few winters, and should not go in as an unprotected mass planting on a lot with rabbits.

• Arborvitae. Foliage stripped to the snow line, bark girdled at the base. Covered above.
• Serviceberry. Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry has smooth, thin young bark — exactly what a rabbit wants in February, and a girdled trunk kills the stem outright. Guard it until the bark roughens, usually four or five years.
• Spirea. Frequently damaged, and its dense twiggy habit provides the nesting cover rabbits want, so it draws them in. The saving grace: spirea resprouts hard from the base, so damage is cosmetic rather than fatal.
• Korean lilac. Dwarf Korean Lilac is specifically listed as frequently damaged. The tree-form version is more vulnerable than the shrub — one girdled standard trunk and the whole grafted head is gone.
• Redtwig dogwood and young maples. Isanti Dogwood gets chewed but resprouts; Sienna Glen Maple and any other maple with smooth young bark is a girdling target for its first several winters.
• Viburnum, crabapple, roses, burning bush, forsythia. All on the frequently-damaged side of extension susceptibility ratings.

Perennials and grasses: the picks and the ones they mow

Rabbit damage to perennials runs on a different calendar. Woody plants get hit in deep winter when nothing else is available; perennials get hit in April and May, when tender new shoots are the softest green thing in the yard. A hosta that vanished overnight in early May was not a slug problem.

Both columns follow the susceptibility ratings published by Iowa State University Extension, the most detailed rabbit-damage plant list available for our region. Note that Cheyenne Spirit Coneflower sits in the second column — one of the best perennials you can plant here, and rabbits will still take it to the ground in early May. A wire ring for its first two springs is usually all it takes.

The privacy-screen decision: plant junipers instead

Everything above leads to one recommendation, and we would rather say it plainly than hedge.

On an exposed site, a property line, a lot backing onto woods or a park, or anywhere you can see rabbit runs in the snow, plant juniper instead of arborvitae. Arborvitae is the metro's most heavily browsed evergreen — deer treat it as candy and rabbits strip it from the snow line up. We replace browsed arborvitae hedges for a living. Junipers get walked past by both animals, and they also handle wind, drought, poor soil and road salt better than arborvitae does, which describes most Twin Cities property lines and boulevards.

Now the honest trade-offs, because a recommendation without them is a sales pitch:

• Junipers fill in more slowly than arborvitae. This is real. Expect a longer wait to a solid screen.
• Narrow columnar junipers need tighter spacing. Sky Rocket goes in at about 3 feet on center, Taylor at about 4 — more plants per linear foot than a Techny run.
• Sky Rocket is prone to splaying open under heavy snow load. Taylor holds a tighter form. On a site that drifts, we lean Taylor.
• Junipers get juniper tip blight, and they are an alternate host for cedar-apple rust. If you have crabapples you love, that matters.
• Junipers hate wet feet. Do not put them in a low, poorly drained corner. That is an arborvitae spot.
• Arborvitae still wins in a fenced yard with no browse pressure — faster fill and lower cost per plant. If a six-foot privacy fence already rings your yard, plant American Pillar or Techny and enjoy the faster screen.

We go through this comparison in full in Juniper Privacy Screens for Minnesota and Arborvitae vs. Spruce vs. Juniper, and the timeline math is in How Fast Do Privacy Trees Actually Grow in Minnesota?

Where selection stops working — protecting the rest

Plant selection is the cheap half of the answer, not the whole answer, because "rabbit-resistant" never means rabbit-proof. In a hard winter with deep snow and a high rabbit population, animals eat things they would ignore in a mild year. Anything you cannot afford to lose gets a physical barrier. The short version, consistent with University of Minnesota Extension's winter protection guidance:

• Quarter-inch mesh hardware cloth is the material. It excludes rabbits and voles both; chicken wire has openings a vole walks through.
• Height is measured from the snow you expect, not the ground. Extension calls for the barrier to stand 18 to 24 inches above the anticipated snow line. On a drifted site in Woodbury or Lakeville that can mean a four-foot cylinder.
• Bury or pin the bottom 2 to 3 inches so nothing crawls under, and hold the cylinder a few inches off the trunk so a rabbit cannot chew through the mesh.
• Install before the first snow, not after you see damage. Damage is done by the time you see it.
• Cut grass and weeds short within about 2 feet of young trunks in late fall, and clear brush piles. Cover is what keeps rabbits in the yard.
• Repellents are a supplement, not a plan. They work by taste and smell, they wash and weather off, and animals get used to a single product — Extension's own advice is to rotate what you use. On a hungry rabbit in February, a fence wins and a spray does not.

Full instructions — cylinder construction, trunk guards, vole protection at the soil line, deer fencing heights and the repellent rotation schedule — are in Protecting Young Trees from Rabbits, Voles and Deer in Minnesota Winters. That article is the hardware guide; this one is the shopping list.

Designing a yard that assumes rabbits

On browsed properties we sort the yard by height rather than by plant type, because rabbits only operate in one band.

• The zero-to-three-foot band is rabbit territory. Everything permanent in it should be off the menu: junipers, boxwood, spruce, potentilla, Russian sage, ornamental grasses. This is where selection does the most work.
• Anything with a young smooth trunk gets a guard, no exceptions, however resistant the species is. A serviceberry, a maple, a tree-form lilac — the trunk is the vulnerable part, and one winter of inattention ends the tree.
• Put the plants rabbits like above the browse line or inside a fence. Spirea and dogwood in a fenced back yard, not out on the boulevard.
• Interrupt the runs. Rabbits move along cover — fence lines, foundation shrubs, deck skirting. Closing the gap under a deck does more than another gallon of repellent.

One timing note: evergreens go in from late August through about September 20 in the metro, and deciduous trees and shrubs through the end of October. Anything installed in that window needs its winter protection the same season — a plant that went in on October 12 is the most attractive thing in the yard on January 12.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most rabbit-resistant privacy plant for a Minnesota yard? Juniper. Columnar junipers like Taylor and Sky Rocket are consistently ignored by both rabbits and deer, and they tolerate wind, drought, poor soil and road salt better than arborvitae. The trade-off is that they fill in more slowly and need tighter spacing — about 3 to 4 feet on center rather than 4 to 5.

Will my arborvitae grow back after rabbits stripped the bottom? No. Arborvitae does not regenerate foliage from bare old wood, so the stripped section stays bare permanently. The plant usually survives if the bark was not girdled all the way around, but the screening you lost at the bottom is gone. Your options are replacing the run, planting a low screen in front of it, or living with the skirt.

How do I tell rabbit damage from deer damage? Look at the cut and the height. Rabbits cut cleanly at a sharp 45-degree angle, like pruners, and work below about three feet or two inches above the snow line. Deer have no upper incisors, so they tear — the stem ends look ragged and shredded — and they feed from roughly two to six feet up.

Are deer-resistant plants also rabbit-resistant? Often, but not reliably. Juniper, spruce and boxwood are unpopular with both. But yew is rabbit-safe and heavily browsed by deer, while spirea and Korean lilac are usually left by deer and frequently chewed by rabbits. Confirm which animal you actually have before buying from a resistance list.

How tall does rabbit fencing need to be in Minnesota? University of Minnesota Extension recommends 18 to 24 inches above the anticipated snow line, not above the ground. Because rabbits walk on packed snow, a two-foot cylinder that worked in November is useless in February. On drifted sites we build four-foot cylinders of quarter-inch hardware cloth with the bottom few inches buried.

Do rabbit repellents actually work? They help and they are not a substitute for a fence. Repellents work by taste or smell, they weather off, and rabbits habituate to a single product, so Extension guidance is to rotate what you apply. On anything you cannot afford to lose, use a physical barrier and treat repellent as a supplement.

Do rabbits eat hydrangeas? Smooth hydrangeas like Annabelle are rated seldom damaged and are among the safer shrubs in a rabbit yard. If stems do get clipped in a hard winter it rarely matters, because Annabelle blooms on new wood and gets cut back hard in early spring anyway. Bigleaf types are a different story — they bloom largely on old wood, so any winter stem loss costs you flowers.

Why do rabbits eat my coneflowers but not my peonies? Timing and chemistry. Rabbits hit perennials in April and May when new shoots are the tenderest green growth available, and coneflower shoots are exactly that. Peony, daylily, catmint, Russian sage and salvia are consistently rated seldom damaged. A ring of wire around new coneflower clumps for their first two springs solves it.

When should I install rabbit protection in the Twin Cities? Before the first lasting snow — late October into early November, ahead of the metro's usual November 10 to 25 ground freeze. Damage happens in deep winter when other food is gone, and by the time you can see it in spring the girdling is already done. Leave barriers up until snowmelt is complete in April.

Are ornamental grasses rabbit-resistant? Established clumps essentially are. Rabbits will nibble tender new shoots on a first-year planting in spring, so a first-season wire ring is worth it, but a mature Karl Foerster or little bluestem clump is not something rabbits work on. Grasses are one of the safest choices in the under-three-foot band.

Ready to plant something rabbits won't eat?

If you are staring at a stripped arborvitae hedge, we can replace it with something that will not be back on the menu next January. Start with Taylor Juniper or Sky Rocket Juniper for screening, Black Hills Spruce for a permanent windbreak, or browse the evergreens and deer-resistant collections. Three Timbers Minnesota delivers across the Twin Cities metro — Edina, Plymouth, Woodbury, Maple Grove and everywhere between — and our crew can plant it for you. Call or text 612-214-1955.