Choosing Plants forFire-Prone Yards
This tool helps you choose plants that are appropriate for your home or business by comparing characteristics such as how easily plants ignite, how much water and sunlight they need, whether they support wildlife, and how well they fit your site.
Quick Plant Lists
Fire-Resistant Landscaping Guide
The following fire-resistant plant selection principles are based on current science and are intended to help reduce wildfire risk in yards located in fire-prone areas.
Plant Selection Principles
All plants will burn under the right conditions. To reduce the risk that vegetation contributes to a home or business igniting, it is essential to consider both horizontal and vertical spacing when landscaping. The following questions are intended to help you evaluate site conditions and make informed plant-selection decisions:
- 1. Placement: How close will each fully grown plant be from any structure?
- 2. Spacing: How densely are the plants planted?
- 3. Laddering: Are plants growing on combustible mulch or overlapping each other?
- 4. Maintenance: How much work (e.g., watering, pruning, thinning, etc.) does the plant require to thrive and be fire-resistant?
- 5. Flammability: Does the plant ignite quickly and burn explosively?
References
- Reducing the Vulnerability of Buildings to Wildfire: Vegetation & Landscaping Guidance — UC ANR publication by Yana Valachovic, Stephen Quarles, and Steven Swain (2021)
- Fire-Reluctant Landscaping Best Practices (view on City of Ashland website)
Home Ignition Zones (HIZ)
The first step in creating a fire-resistant yard is unambiguous placement of plants and organic mulches. A fire-resistant landscaping plan calls for planting in 3 zones relative to distance from a structure: 0-5 feet, 5-30 feet, and beyond 30 feet. These fire-science determined "home ignition zones" apply when the building is constructed with stucco, concrete, metal, or cement board siding and trim, double pane windows/doors, and closed eaves. If the structure is sided with wood or has single pane windows the 0-5 feet zone should be at least doubled (0-10 feet).
DISCLAIMER: The developer and contributors to this database make no claims of accuracy, completeness, authorship, ownership, or proprietary interest in the information and disclaim all warranties and guarantees to the information in the database and assume no liability or responsibility with respect to the information or application of the tool. Most of the information is already available through an Internet search. The software is original and proprietary.
About This Project
This database was created to support homeowners, landscapers, and residents in making informed decisions about fire-resistant landscaping. All plant attributes are open to interpretation, so we provide data from multiple sources to help you make the best choice for your situation.
We can't stop the wildfires that are upon us, but we can help you adapt to life with wildfire through thoughtful plant selection and landscape design.
A companion tool to Living-with-Fire.org · Learn more