4 ways to firescape your garden
With wildfires and record-high temperatures the cause of so much damage, we went to the experts for tips on how to beat the heat in the garden and help reduce fire damage. This trend is also known as “firescaping.” The fire-safe garden can be a rich and colourful landscape, offering year-round interest and beauty while doubling as an important tool in the fight against wildfires. Read on for 4 ways to firescape your garden.
1. Remove Fire Hazards
While it may seem like a no-brainer, it’s important to continually check for and remove easily-flammable and ignitable materials on and around your house – especially anything within 30 feet (9 metres) from your house and other structures. Creating this “defensible space” makes it less difficult for firefighters to occupy the space, if needed.
This means removing any dead or drought-stressed vegetation from your landscape, gutters and roof as well as plants, shrubs and trees that produce combustible materials like dead branches, needles, pinecones and leaves. Any trees within 100 feet (30 metres) of the home should have limbs removed up to about 6 feet (1.8 metres) off the ground.
In a high fire hazard area, if you’re mulching within 30 feet (9 metres) of your home, rather than using more combustible options like shredded rubber, pine straw or cedar, it’s preferable to use inorganic materials such as crushed stones or gravel as seen used around the Flower Carpet® roses below.
2. Choose the Right Plants
When temperatures hit the high 90’s F (30’s C) and even higher, it’s wise to have some drought- and heat-resistant plants in your garden. Sedum, stonecrop, iceplant, liriope, dianella, coneflowers, lantana, salvia, yucca and Festival™ cordyline (seen below and also sold as Red Fountain™) all drought and/or heat resistant. Low maintenance, drought-tolerant shrubs include daphne (such as the new Daphne Perfume Princess™ rhododendron, potentilla, buddleia, cotoneaster, and witch hazel.
Flower Carpet® roses are also drought tolerant once established. “Even though we had temperatures of 113°F for several days and no rain, all I did was water them very well once a week, and they performed beautifully,” reported Carrie G. of Howe, Oklahoma, a Tesselaar Plants home garden tester.
With their luxuriant stems and fleshy roots, agapanthus have been used as a fire-break plant in Australia for over 100 years. To use as such, plant them thickly together as a border. Although the tops of the plants can burn in a fire, they can help to slow the fire’s progress. Their thick roots can also reduce damaging erosion that often occurs after wildfires. A nice option to consider is Storm™ agapanthus, which come in a variety of colours that will work nicely in any garden or landscape.
3. Open it Up
Another sure-fire firescaping strategy involves designing more open space into the landscape. Adding vegetation-free strips as fuel breaks can help to slow or stop a blaze. These can be decorative rock gardens, faux riverbeds, water features or even decomposed granite walkways. A bonus to opening up your landscape is that you’ll find you’ve simplified things. The breaks in vegetation can add interesting elements to the landscape and overall, it can become more peaceful and relaxing to look at and maintain.
4. Keep it watered
As temperatures rise, keeping up with watering is the ultimate firescaping strategy. While we want to conserve this valuable resource, it can be helpful to use drip irrigation systems that are inexpensive to set up and that can get water where it matters most – right at the base of plant. This curbs fungal disease by keeping water off foliage. Also, since you’re only watering the roots, you aren’t encouraging weeds. So remember – keep your landscape watered, lean, clean and green but don’t be afraid to experiment with colour and texture and choose plants that offer you season-long interest.
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