Hedges and fencerows also protect the soil from wind and water erosion. Hedges are maintained by plowing, burning, or mowing adjacent to the hedge to keep it from spreading. Control of trees within the hedge is essential to prevent shading out of the desirable hedge plants that require full sun. Trees within the hedge are controlled mechanically or with herbicides such as DuPont Krenite . The Wildlife Research Project at Chesapeake Farms, which is conducted in cooperation with several universities, has discovered that rabbits prefer dense hedges that are bordered by strips of mowed grass.
Songbirds are most plentiful along the edge of woods that are bordered by a hedge.
Continue 0.1 mile. Stop 5 - Sunflowers Sunflowers, planted in early May, provide food in the form of seeds for a variety of birds including the gold finch and mourning dove, a popular game species. The vegetative parts of actively growing sunflowers are also a preferred food of white-tailed deer. Deer like the plants so much that they will feed on them to the extent that flowers and seeds will not be produced. Because we plant these sunflowers specifically for birds, we use an electric fence to exclude deer from the sunflower plot.