Looks like winter Deer browsing.

Yes, around here we call that deer pruning. It's a shame- must have been lean pickings for food this winter near you.

They're not going to regrow that foliage- if you want to keep them your only hope is to expand that bed to make it deep enough for some flowering shrubs to hide the devastation. And unless you use broadleaved evergreens or another conifer it will be bald and unsightly all during the winters.

I'm afraid I would be compelled to pull them out and start over. And 20 year olds will be quite the chore to remove unless a chop at ground level works for you.

If you do start over I'd suggest choosing four or five different types of plants (trees conifers, shrubs) and make a mixed border alternating between them all. That way if you lose one or one gets deer munched it is easy to replace without having to match species or size. This almost always works out better in the long run.

or really large dogs... lol ...

are there dormant deciduous shrubs in front of them ???

seems weird ... that there would be no deer for 20 years.. and then this happen at this level ...

how much lawn do you have in front .. and could you plant shrubs there.. to hide the ugly parts ... nothing wrong with them up higher than ground level ...

and i totally agree on never planting one type of anything .. just in case a plague like this comes along ...

ken

James,

If the deer left any green at all on those bare branches, there will be some regrowth this season, depending on how bad it is but generally once they get pruned, the deer will come back again and again. I think its because the new, tender growth is so tasty to them.

I had a nice arborvitae at one corner of my old house, about the same size as yours, probably 20 years old or more. One winter the deer pruned it bare to about 5 ft high. It later died. Could've been the drought that killed it bc it was growing on very sandy soil.

Looks like the trees shown above are the very frequently planted 'Smaragd' which often gets similarly barbered from mule deer head height level down on rural properties in my region. I've always assumed this was a winter phenomenon with the animals otherwise not having a particular preference for arborvitae. Because ironically even though deer often live in cold winter climates when there is snow they have trouble finding food and may even starve. So that I suspect the ones that come to my place actually eat sections off many of the native sword fern fronds here. The parts that poke up out of the snow.