Hi all, with everything that has been going on, I thought now would be a good time for this blog entry. As we recently had a fire at our home and office, I figured now would be the best time to go over what is important to know about fire prevention through landscape design.
What could I possibly mean by this? How can you stop or prevent further disaster with plants? Lady you must be crazy, right? No, not really. What I am speaking about is the way that the spreading of fire can be prevented through maintaining your current landscape to the design and the specific items within. We speak from experience as we were able to avoid the fire spreading to the outside due to the embers coming down onto the landscape.
So how did we do it? By planning ahead when we designed the landscape and put in the pond and surrounding foliage. When installed we tried to maintain a fire-safe landscape plan.
Making your landscape fire-safe means making it harder for fires to find fuel to burn and paths to keep moving along. make sure you space out trees appropriately to reduce fire spread, and if you have trees near your home, be sure they are trimmed to stay away from your chimney, if a house fire occurs.
We live in an area where the threat of fire is real and really has its own season, therefore we need to consider this when we are designing and maintaining our current landscapes. Proper watering and irrigation will go a long way to making sure if there is a fire there is less fuel to burn.
Other preventative measures that can be taken are to choose foliage that is harder to burn. A completely fireproof plant does not exist, however plants that are harder to burn and resistant to heat and flames are in existence so why not utilize what is available to help the environment and yourself?
House fires are not common in your everyday life but taking steps to help prevent such occurrences in the long run are worth the effort and you will thank yourself in the end. Taking the time to consider all possibilities when planning your landscape and maintenance can save a lot of money and headache in the future.
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