Lawndale, CA (PRWEB) August 08, 2013
With wildfires and record-high temperaturesthe cause of so much damage out West, including the loss of hundreds of homes in Colorado Springs, the death of 19 firefighters in Arizona and wildfire damage in all 50 states, Tesselaar Plants went to the experts for tips on how to beat the heat in the garden and help prevent wildfires.
This trend of heat and drought is why firescaping or fire-safe landscaping has become so popular, said Anthony Tesselaar, co-founder and president of international garden plant marketer Tesselaar Plants. Its also why weve rounded up this list of expert strategies for helping your garden deal with the heat and risk of fire.
Pros offering the following tips include Dave Egbert, a California firefighter and gardener who runs the website FiresafeGardens.com; JoAnne Skelly, a firescaping educator with the Living with Fire program run by the University of Nevadas Cooperative Extension in Carson City; and Scott Cohen of Green Scene Landscaping and Pools in Los Angeles.
Fire safety at home has become a hot topic for rural and suburban gardeners as the number of homes destroyed by raging wildfires has increased, said Egbert in Fire-Safe Favorites, an article in the fall 2012 issue of Pacific Horticulture magazine. The fire-safe garden can be a rich and colorful landscape, offering year-round interest and beauty while doubling as an important tool in the fight against wildfires.
1. Remove fire hazards.
While it may seem like a no-brainer, its important to continually check for and remove easily flammable and ignitable materials on and around your house especially anything within 30 feet. Doing this will greatly minimize the chance of a burning ember setting your property ablaze, said Skelly.
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, pine cones and leaves. Skelly also recommends regular prunings at the appropriate times and, when planting trees, keeping in mind their mature height and width so limbs are kept at least 15 feet away from power lines, chimneys and other structures.
Likewise, said Egbert, flammable materials on or around your house like wooden shingles, outdoor furniture and mulch should be replaced with nonflammable ones. Stacked wood and scrap lumber piles should be moved at least 30 feet away from the house.
Egbert also suggests installing fire-resistant surfaces and finishes, minimizing roof eaves and removing overhanging decks and fencing. Any trees within 100 feet of the home should have limbs removed up to 10 feet off the ground.
2. Choose the right plants.
When temperatures hit the high 90s and even three digits, said Tesselaar, its wise to have some drought- and heat-resistant plants in your garden. He recommends sedum, stonecrop, verbena, coneflowers, lantana, ornamental grasses, phormiums (New Zealand flax), salvia, yucca (Adams Needle from plant developer Monrovia is a great choice) and Festival cordyline. Easy-care, drought-tolerant shrubs include potentilla, barberry, buddleia, boxwood, cotoneaster, juniper, and witch hazel. Easy-to-grow annuals that survive in drought conditions include geraniums, ageratum, calendula, cosmos, snapdragons, and Dusty Miller.
Flower Carpet roses are also drought tolerant once established. Even though we had temperatures of 113 degrees for several days and no rain, all I did was water them very well once a week, and they performed beautifully, reported Carrie Glenn of Howe, Oklahoma (Zone 6b), a Tesselaar Plants home garden tester.
As firescaping becomes increasingly popular, so too, have the number of plants identified or marketed as fire-safe. But Skelly warns that such proclamations come via anecdotal evidence, not scientific testing, and that lists of such plants vary from state to state.
We try to encourage people to use plants that are deciduous instead of evergreen, shorter instead of taller, herbaceous instead of woody and free of waxes, oils and resins, she said.
Traditional firescaping plants have included succulents like cacti, sedum and ice plant, said Tesselaar, but there are many more fire-safe plants than you may realize. Monrovia, he noted, lists 812 firescaping or firewise varieties on its website from agapanthus (or Lily of the Nile) like the sturdy Storm series to cannas like the colorful Tropicanna