May 2025 Newsletter: Start Planning for Fire

Greetings, friends – 

We were caught off guard recently when a friend said they were well into their fire protection season. This friend’s home was nearly burned a few years ago in one of the California fires, but frantic work clearing debris at the last minute saved the house. This year, after a lush spring in northern California, they are staying ahead of the weeds and already shaping fast-growing plants to be sure vegetation stays away from the house.

All of us in summer-dry climates live in fire country and preparing for fire is not simply cleaning the roof gutters in autumn. In truth, no amount of vegetation management stops the massive windborne conflagrations once they get into housing developments, but we can definitely do a bit of garden design to keep individual houses from catching fire and contributing to a regional catastrophe.

~ Saxon Holt and Nora Harlow 

May’s Blog – Making the Most of Zone Zero

In fire-prone regions throughout the world, regulations are already in place requiring the maintenance of defensible space around homes and other structures. To date, meeting the requirements has been possible without radical changes to the landscape: limbing up trees and shrubs, eliminating fire ladders, cutting weeds to the ground, and removing plants considered hazardous. New regulations in California, likely to be adopted elsewhere, require the removal of foundation plantings, a widely accepted convention of traditional landscapes. Here we consider some exciting alternatives.

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Instagram Memories

May 8, 2021

“This garden in the hills beyond Santa Barbara, California, was overrun with a wildfire five years ago. Yucca, agave, opuntia, and olives have recovered.”

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Firescape Design Ideas:

Zone 0 fire safety can be easily incorporated into a new garden’s design. For homeowners with existing gardens and mature landscaping, however, it will be a challenge to retrofit their gardens, and we urge those gardeners to keep their gardens hydrated and groomed, free of deadwood and debris. Let’s look at a house and garden that was burned to the ground in Sonoma County’s Tubbs firestorm in October 2017 for an example of this new design philosophy:

Note the stone paver path replacing the foundation plantings.

Fireproof raised beds keep windblown fire embers from gathering in vegetation.

Rethinking garden design in fire country does not mean no vegetation; it means rethinking where we place it and how we maximize our enjoyment.  Note in the next photo the native plant perennial border to be enjoyed from the gravel patio, and the vegetable garden creeping toward the house by way of the narrow strips of soil planted with squash, which will cover much of the gravel by summer’s end.

Get More Ideas in our Book

Links We Like

California Forestry and Fire Protection: Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space.

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