Photo Credit: Resilient Landscape Coalition; Design by April Owens, photo by Saxon Holt/PhotoBotanic
A few weeks ago, over 200 residents toured the Safer West County’s member gardens with Ellie Insley, where they learned how to garden and create a fire-resilient landscape. Homes on this tour demonstrated how beautiful defensible space can be.
If you are in Forestville, Monte Rio, Camp Meeker or Occidental you can even get $1000 rebate when you do defensible space work. Read on to learn how!
Ellie’s garden was part of the Eco-Friendly Garden Tour, hosted by the Sonoma-Marin Saving Water Program and California Native Plant Society. The garden was designed in collaboration with the Resilient Landscapes Coalition as an educational program to teach people about gardening in the defensible space and beyond.
The garden demonstrates the coalition’s principles and shows Ellie’s process to create a fire-resilient area surrounding her home.
Some actions demonstrated:
- “Hardening the home” by installing 1/8” mesh over all vents and around the perimeter of the deck to keep embers from entering
- Installing a 5’ edging of decorative gravel around the home and deck, removing all flammable material
- Adding gravel immediately next to home. Without the traditional “foundation planting”, which can create a fire hazard, Ellie’s garden proves that gravel edging can still be very attractive.
Ellie’s home integrates with the other firewise features, like islands of low native shrubs, perennials, grasses and annual plants in the 5-30’ zone around the home.
The planting islands are separated by non-flammable flagstone and gravel pathways that allow you to meander through, with seating areas to afford different views of the plantings, surrounding valley oak savannah, and distant Atascadero Creek.
To learn more about plant selection, spacing and more visit:
ResilientLandscapesCoalition.org.
Ellie co-leads SWC’s educational programming and has been an active driver of the Resilient Landscape Coalition through her years of work with Sonoma Ecology Center.
To learn more about Defensible Space or apply for a $1000 rebate towards defensible space work visit SaferWestCounty.org. (Rebates available to residents of Camp Meeker, Monte Rio, Forestville, and Occidental.)