Your Landscape Can Help Protect Your Home
Fall is the time to get out in the garden and refresh and renew the landscape, especially after the beating gardens have taken with this summer’s heat. In years past I have tried to plant every bit of space in my garden, leaving very little bare ground visible. In the past few years however, the term ‘firescaping’ has become popular, leading to a rethinking of what to plant and how to plant in the area near our homes. Although not all of us live in rural areas or in the wildland/urban interface (WUI), the last 5 years has demonstrated to Californians that suburbs and towns are not immune to being swept up, and burned down, during a wildfire.
Firescaping, which is landscaping with a fire resistant landscape, requires a little more thought and planning, but can result in a very diverse, low maintenance, aesthetically pleasing garden. And with home insurance premiums rising, being cancelled or being difficult to obtain, demonstrating that your yard is planted to be defensible from fire can be a positive point in negotiating home insurance.
Firescaping is not a scraping to bare dirt all of your garden, or using just rock and gravel as your landscape, or installing artificial turf. Plants are important to lower temperatures around your home, provide food and shelter to as many life forms as possible, and provide you with beauty, food and function. Firescaping is a combination of fire wise and water wise landscaping practices, perfect for our fire prone and drought prone California landscapes.
It would be terrific if a simple list of plants that are fire resistant was all you needed to succeed, and you could just rely on them to provide a safer landscape. But you need to retrain your gardening brain to consider several aspects of landscaping to produce a fire wise landscape. Planting close together and layering groundcovers, perennials, shrubs and trees can give us a ‘cottage garden’ or natural looking landscape, but it also provides a fuel ladder that allows for fire to spread rapidly, both forward and upward. Some plants provide a perfect bed for embers to ignite, so some plants should be avoided close to the home. And all plants need maintenance to reduce dead leaves and branches that will easily catch fire.
Rather than treating all of your landscape the same, consider your property to be in ‘zones’ around your home. In each zone you can monitor the density and type of vegetation. While these zones were originally developed by Cal Fire for rural properties, for city dwellers they still function the same way. The two zones that the property owner can manipulate quickly to provide the most increase in safety is ‘Zone 0’, or the ‘noncombustible zone, and ‘Zone 1’, which is called ‘Lean, clean and green’.
Zone 0 extends from 0 to 5 feet from the home (including attached wooden decks or shade cover). There shouldn’t be any living or dead plant material in this area, or wood chips, organic mulch or weed cloth in this zone. Wow, gone are the days when we would decorate the house with foundation plantings! Planting shrubs and perennials right next to the home’s foundation, right under or even partially blocking windows, directly under vents or allowing plants to reach the eaves of the home are absolutely unacceptable in firescaping. This includes containers of plants, windowsill plantings, and of course plants that we allow to grow up walls or on trellis’s attached to the home. For me this is painfully difficult to avoid, because I want to plant near the house to hide heater/ac units, gas lines, downspouts, water lines and other ugly pieces of the exterior. But this is the space where we can avoid flying embers catching on plants and producing flames, or plants burning that can spark fires inside the vents in attics, or burning next to windows which can break due to excessive heat allowing fire inside the building. Using inorganic mulches like rocks, pavers, and decomposed granite are much better choices close to the building. If you have to plant close to the house use groundcovers that can be easily maintained, or small succulents which often wither or collapse under fire conditions rather than create a flame. If you are planting in containers use sizes that can be moved away from the structure easily, and plant fire resistant plants, again using succulents and fleshy plants which will collapse in heat rather than produce flames.
Garbage cans, garden art, upholstered chairs and water hoses can be problems, either because they will catch fire or can catch flying embers. Many people have fences attached directly to buildings, which provide a highway of fire directly to the structure. If possible, replace any sections of fence directly attached with metal fencing. If that’s not possible keep a rock handy so if you did need to evacuate (as many did during the 2020 LNU Fire) you can secure gates open to interrupt the flow of fire as you head out the door with your ‘Go’ bag.
Zone 1 is the area that is 5 to 30 feet out from your home. For city dwellers this is the area where you do most of your outdoor living. It is called the ‘lean, clean, and green zone’, and it is the area you can plant low grasses, shrubs, perennials and small trees. Massed plantings of nectar and pollen rich groundcovers and perennials grouped in ‘islands’ work well in Zone 1, and can be planted throughout the area, including just beyond 5 feet from the house. Larger perennials and shrubs can be highlighted, but maintain space between them. Hedges are common in our landscape, but if you are going to grow a hedge it needs to stay away from the buildings and fences, and needs to be maintained and pruned often so it isn’t filled with dead branches and twigs in the center. Shrubs should be spaced at least twice their mature height from other shrubs, and trees should be planted so that if they were to fall they wouldn’t fall into zone 0. Small trees with a mature height of no more than 15 ft can be planted in this zone. It is perfect area for fruit trees such as citrus or stone fruit, which are generally maintained to be short. Trees should be limbed up to 6 feet from the ground, and any plants grown under trees should be well away from the trunk, and the mature height of the shrubs below any tree should still leave 6 feet spacing below the trees. Zone 1 walkways may be composed of non organic materials but may be interspersed with wood chips. Raised beds can be placed in this zone. Garden art and outdoor seating is commonly placed in this zone, but it is a good idea to use metal and non-flammable material as much as possible.
If you have enough space to consider Zone 2, which ranges from 30-100 feet from your home, perennials and shrubs can be planted closer together, larger trees can be grown and the density between trees and shrubs can be reduced. If you are in a country setting, generally neighbors will be farther away, but in a suburban setting you will need to consider how close you are to neighbors homes, garages and outbuildings.
Of course, many of us have large trees and shrubs on our own properties as well as neighboring properties that make some of these rules difficult, if not impossible, to follow exactly. Start small, concentrating especially in Zone 0 which is primary area of concern to help make your space more defensible for fire.
There are characteristics to look for when deciding what to plant in your garden. Many plants are considered to be ‘fire retardant’, meaning they tend to sizzle and wilt when exposed to fire rather than produce flames. In general, leaves that are broad and thick, tend to bend rather than snap, are full of moisture, have less fragrance and have more watery sap tend to be less flammable.
Succulents are an obvious selection of safer plants in a fire wise garden, and many tend to ‘melt’ rather than flame when subjected to fire. Interestingly many food crops are more fire retardant. Everything from lettuce, artichokes and melons to shrubs and trees such as blueberries and citrus are excellent choices for the garden, and they are functional as well. Low growing lawn substitutes like thyme, yarrow and ajuga are adapted to lower water needs than turf and are fire retardant as well. Many perennials and shrubs such as Echinacea, penstemon, coreopsis and butterfly bush are more fire retardant choices for your garden, and will bring many insects and other pollinators into the garden.
Many folks want to include California native plants in their gardens now, and these plants can be good choices in fire wise gardens. Many of the native choices are low water users and are easy to keep well hydrated in the garden, requiring infrequent water during the summer months. Over time they have become well adapted to fire. While some natives, such as white sage, and many of the pine species, can explode into flames, others with large, thicky leathery leaves will slow fire’s forward movement. An excellent website resource for fire wise landscaping in general and fire wise landscaping with California native plants in particular is www.resilientlandscapescoalition.org.
As you plant and renew your garden this fall, planning a fire wise landscape may well be a new consideration. No landscape can be ‘fireproof’, but with some eye to design, use of less flammable materials and good plant choices you can significantly reduce the opportunity for flames to take hold and spread on your property. The last but very important point of firescaping is to keep your plants healthy, watered, well spaced and properly pruned. Plan a landscape that meets with your lifestyle, so your landscape is working for you. Besides planting some new plants this fall, take a look at your landscape for maintenance needs. This is a good time to prune out old, less vigorous, dead and improperly placed tree branches, shrubs and perennials.
It may seem that all of these new rules will really cramp your gardening style. But remember, your beautiful ‘firescaped’ landscape may help to save your life! Also, we have all heard the stories about homeowners, even in residential areas, losing their home insurance when overhead photos or drive by examinations show that the home is not fire safe. Firescaping your property can be one more way to maintain insurance. For more information on firescaping, vist the Cal Fire web page at www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-ready/defensible-space/.