Creating a fire-wise garden

 

Through face-to-face workshops, CFA’s Landscaping for Bushfire plant selection tool is helping keen gardeners to have valuable conversations about how to enhance bushfire resilience around their homes, while providing enjoyable landscapes and habitat for wildlife. 

 

These initiatives are a collaboration between CFA and Community-Based Bushfire Management facilitators.

Workshops like this allow people to walk around different zones of gardens classed as  ‘fire-wise’ properties, have conversations about practical landscaping elements and how to best place plants to achieve passive fire protection. This includes through site analysis and design (zoning), understanding plant flammability (placement and separation), while incorporating well-placed hard landscaping, such as paths, driveways, low walls and pruned vegetation. 

Subtle modifications to your garden can make living with bushfire less scary and aesthetically beautiful.

"Workshop participants said they left feeling empowered and confident to design a garden that looks after wildlife,” Newham Landcare Group event organiser Jess Szigethy-Gyula said. “They are not so scared of bushfires now.”

The Landscaping for Bushfire tool can be used to test a range of plant specimens from local gardens for fire-wise attributes. This means touching, scrunching and smelling foliage, and sharing different opinions about the values these plants provide people.

Participants also learned that while some plants may be ranked as more flammable, they can be managed through pruning or by placing them in safer locations more than 10 metres from the house.

“We can increase our understanding of not only the structure of plants, but also how their safe placement in a garden is influenced by the property’s location and topography,” workshop presenter Owen Gooding said.

 

Submitted by	News and Media