Gardening: Book gives homeowners a guide to preparing landscape for wildfires
It’s wildfire season in the Inland Northwest. The “Nature” part of “Near Nature, Near Perfect” is bone dry and any hint of a flame could start a devastating wildfire.
As all-consuming as wildfires can be, there are ways to increase the resiliency of your property from the flames. Our local fire districts provide property walk-throughs to identify trees, brush and structural issues that need to be thinned or addressed. The Washington Department of Natural Resources offers programs to help remove brush from properties. Throughout the year, various agencies offer classes on how to firescape your property. It’s nice, however, to have a “go-to” book that can be perused when needed to help you prepare for a wildfire.
Recently, Timber Press of Portland published a new book called “Firescaping Your Home, a Manual for Readiness in Wildfire Country.” Written by two botany and forest ecology experts, the book evolved out of their experiences with the 2018 Camp Fire in California and serves not only as a guide for preparing your house and land for fire but also the historical importance of fire in maintaining ecological integrity of our Western forests and grasslands.
The authors – Adriene Edwards, a botanist, plant ecologist and garden designer, and Rachel Schleiger, a plant restoration ecologist – have extensive experience working with plant communities and forest ecology in California, Washington and Oregon. When Schleiger and her family were forced to evacuate from the Camp Fire, it was an opportunity to combine their professional experience with their up-close and personal encounter with a huge, devastating wildfire.
The book’s focus on building fire resiliency and understanding fire’s importance in our Western ecosystems helps readers make educated choices in preparing for fire and its aftermath. The chapter on fire behavior is particularly revealing when it comes to how fire moves through the landscape.
Beyond the discussion of the role and behavior of fire, the nuts-and-bolts chapters of the book walk a homeowner through the detailed evaluation process to prepare structures and landscapes for fire, including discussions on evaluating roofing, siding, soffits, glass windows and structural points where fire can get a foothold.
The book reviews how to use a three-tiered zoning system to prepare your landscape for fire. Particular attention is paid to the zone immediately around structures and how the careful selection of plants and hardscaping can increase fire resiliency. In the outlying zones, suggestions on plant selection and spacing combine fire resiliency and an aesthetically appealing landscape.
Lastly, the book features a chapter on fire-resistant native plants that can be used in landscaping. While the list is heavy on California natives, it has many good suggestions on what and what not to use in landscapes. The authors used the long-established Sunset Climate Zones instead of the USDA zoning system to describe plant hardiness. The Sunset system takes more environmental factors into consideration than the USDA system. If you use the book, northeast Washington is in Sunset zones 1 and 2.