Time to shift the focus from fire prevention to plants

As the year draws to an end, my husband and I finished up our efforts to reduce our wildfire risk.  A notice from the Los Angeles County's Board of Supervisors in March concerning the necessity of creating "defensible space clearance" in areas facing significant fire risk triggered those efforts.  (You can find my first post on the subject here).  That notice prompted several actions on our parts, the first of which were relatively simple.

The arbor visible in the distance in the photo on the left, adjacent to our house's roof, was the first thing to go.  It was removed in late April as shown on the right.  I thought I might miss it but I don't, although the Clematis it formerly supported has been forced to weave itself into the nearby shrubs.  We also removed a wood arbor in the north-side garden, which no longer supported anything.

The next steps on my part involved identifying plants that presented a heightened level of risk, either based on their flammability or their placement.  I arranged to have twenty-odd plants removed (as discussed here).  I've since worked to fill many of the gaps, although some remain.

Meanwhile the Fire Department conducted its inspection of local properties in June.  We received notice of our compliance with current requirements in late July.  At the same time, statewide discussions concerning "zone zero," which is intended to establish a space of five feet free of flammable materials around homes in high risk areas, heated up.  In October, I discovered that our local fire severity zones had been redefined.  I was shocked to learn that we'd ended up in a "green zone," albeit just outside of the fire risk areas.  Our neighborhood of fifty-six homes and one empty lot consists of twenty homes in high risk or very high risk zones and twenty-one in moderate risk zones, with fifteen homes and the empty lot in the green zone.

Despite finding that our home is outside the high risk area, with homes in such areas less than a five minutes walk away, we decided we should go ahead in taking steps to "harden" our home in the event of a wildfire.  That involved removing wood structures directly attached to the house like the arbor that had previously been attached to the south side of the house.

My husband almost immediately began tackling removal of the wood fence that bisected our garden on its north side with its attachment to that end of the house.

The photo on the left shows the fence in place and the photo on the right shows the area after it'd been taken down.  We'd talked about getting a contractor to remove the 2-sided fence but my husband decided to handle it himself in early November.  We were lucky to get our tree service to funnel the fence planks through their chipper when they were here pruning our trees.

We've made two additional changes since then.

We'd slated the wood pergola attached to the front of the house for removal too

Once again, I didn't realize my husband had decided to tackle it on his own until I heard the electric saw going.  A neighbor helped him with the largest posts.

All but 2 boards remain as he hasn't figured out how to remove those without damaging the roof's overhang (yet).  Once again, the change doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

There was a lot of wood left behind and no helpful tree service to haul it away.  However, 2 neighbors (both with vacation homes in snow country) are willing to accept it as firewood.  

We also replaced the wood bench that surrounded the Magnolia tree in our front garden.  It wasn't attached to the house, although it's relatively close to it, but it'd deteriorated.  Rather than rebuilding it, we decided it made sense to replace it with a metal bench.

The original wood bench, which functioned in part as a plant stand, is on the left.  The new metal bench is on the right.

I'm still using the bench to support potted plants, all succulents and bromeliads

My initial focus now is on cleaning up and replanting the area between the two north-side garden areas formerly divided by the fence to improve the flow between them.  The immediate challenge is to remove all or most of the western sword ferns (Polystichum munitum) that occupy much of the area on both sides of the former fence.  I didn't plant the ferns there and I believe most of them spread from the neighbor's side of the fence that still separates our properties.  Its bulbous roots are everywhere and I suspect that keeping it in check will be a perpetual process.

Should the spindly lime citrus tree ends up on the tree service's removal list next year, I'll be eyeing the space for a small greenhouse

We've had beautiful weather for the past few days with temperatures in the mid-to-upper 70sF (23-26C).  Rain was expected to return this weekend but the chances of that have dwindled dramatically in recent days.  There's snow in the mountains to the east of us, however.

 

All material © 2012-2025 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party