Firescaping your home: Cape Town blaze a stark warning
While staying in a cottage on a picturesque smallholding near Crossways in April, I heard the news of the devastating fires in Cape Town and how residents in neighbouring suburbs were forced to evacuate their homes.
Having lived in Australia for three years, where bushfires are a common occurrence — and thinking at that time that thankfully this didn’t happen back home — I realised how vulnerable to fire our quaint little dwelling where we were staying was.
The property we rented for 10 days has a very dry wooden fence around it, an English ivy creeper, which is highly flammable, grows over the front of the house, no fire break has been cut around the property, some of the ceilings are made of dry reed, there is a thatched lapa in the garden and the surrounding dry bush is just waiting to act as kindle for an encroaching fire.
And there would be no hope of wetting the area to keep the flames at bay as the water supply is dependent upon a pump which needs electricity to function.
That need for water could happen at one of those infuriating times when there is load-shedding or worse, an unanticipated cut in power as a result of vandalism or transformer theft.
If you live in an area where you are at risk of bushfires burning down your home, you may do well to prepare your property to be fire-safe.
Here are some ways to fireproof your home and garden using plants and other preventive measures:
Cut a 3m firebreak around the property to provide protection by removing vegetation and exposing bare ground and soil.
The purpose is to create an area where things won’t burn and will help reduce the intensity of any encroaching fire.
Wooden boundary fences are a fire hazard if your property is in a high risk area.
It is also important to know which plants are pyrophytic — “fire-loving”.
All plants are combustible but some are seriously more so than others.
These are trees and shrubs which drop huge quantities of leaves, shed bark and contain flammable oils and resins.
Flammable trees include the Australian blackwood, bottlebrushes, melaleucas (from which we get tea tree oil), Port Jackson and rooikrans. Cypress trees also contain resin.
Blue gum, eucalyptus, acacias and pine trees are also infamously flammable.
Eucalyptus trees’ leaves contain highly flammable oils, and are equally dangerous when dead and dry.
They produce a dry leaf litter which allows no other growth beneath the trees, providing a highly combustible kindling to a fire.
Where blue gum trees grow in groves, the eucalyptus oil from the trees vaporises in the heat, leaving a smoggy vapour hanging overhead. This gas is extremely flammable and the cause of many wild fires.
Flax and grasses — such as pampas grass and some ornamental grasses also encourage the spread of fire.
Though growing grasses and allowing them to remain unkempt is a popular trend in landscaping today, they do present a fire hazard.
It is preferable to have a well-mown lawn which is also devoid of dry thatch build-up beneath their growth.
Palm trees are risky if their dried fronds have not been removed.
The Mediterranean herb rosemary has oils in its leaves which make the plant ignitable.
English ivy (Hedera helix) is often encouraged to scramble up trees and walls, which does look extremely attractive, but the downside is it can be a fire hazard as the plant is highly flammable and in the wrong situation can act as a fire ladder on trees and houses.
In the same instance, where trees grow close to a building — if they are tall they can also create “ladders”, enabling flames to escalate upwards to burn the upper reaches of your home.
Groundcovers/mulch
Avoid using flammable mulches such as wood chips, pine needles or pine bark. Rather use pebbles, gravel or paving, which allow water and rain to soak through to the soil.
If you prefer a “living” mulch, use nonflammable, fire-resistant groundcovers as they contain moisture and slow down fire.
Evergreen groundcovers such as gazania can be fire-retardant, as can trailing plants such as osteospermum and vygies.
A dependable fire-retardant groundcover is the fat, fleshy-leafed sour fig, which is a quick grower, establishing itself readily in poor soils.
It hugs the terrain holding the soil together on slopes. If it is not available at your nursery, it can be found growing wild along the roadside.
Break off pieces which will quickly take root and spread in soil.
In general, grow plants with high moisture content such as succulents.
All plants must be in a healthy, irrigated state.
A cousin of mine who lives in the Western Cape in an area which is regularly threatened by fires, has the known fire-retardant tree Rhus lucida growing along her boundary.
It is a small tree which grows to a height of 2m, with shiny trifoliate leaves producing small, creamy-white flowers that turn into edible fruits loved by birds.
Its value is that it provides shelter for less tough and slower growing species and establishes itself happily in drought, salt spray and high wind.
Plants that produce a lot of leaf litter should be avoided. Those with an open growth and loose branches rather than a heavy canopy are best.
Choose trees with smooth trunks instead of those with loose or flaky bark.
Remove lower branches of trees to shoulder height, as well as dead or decaying wood and fallen branches. Keep the area under trees free of dead twigs, leaves and large clumps of dry grasses.
If you need trellises or pergolas to support climbing plants, rather opt for structures made of metal rather than wood.
Be sure to clean out dead twigs and leaves from the climbers.
Plants with twiggy growth such as the bougainvillea also enable a fire to spread.
Aloe aborescens and Agave attenuata were particular stalwarts in recent fires.
You may identify fire-resistant plants by looking for those with leaves that are moist and supple, produce little dead wood, and have sap that is water-like and does not have a strong odour.
Avoid those with small needle-like leaves. Rosemary, lavender, rockroses and oleanders are flammable.
Bamboo plants provide good screening but because they are tall, dry and grow close together, are easily combustible.
Some fire-retardant plants include all succulents; spekboom, agapanthus, tulbaghia, dusty miller, citrus trees, coprosma, coreopsis daisy, cotoneaster, dietes bicolor, day lilies, lavender, honeysuckle, gaura, gazanias, olive and deciduous fruit trees.
One of my favourite trees which we bought recently is the carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua), which has lovely pendulous branches and thankfully is fire-resistant.
Advice from a Cape St Francis homeowner, Mush Hide, whose house was almost engulfed by a huge fire not so long ago, is to use indigenous plants in your landscaping and install a swimming or rock pool as a further fire retardant measure.
Hard landscaping
Enhance your garden with “hard” landscaping elements that retard fire; pathways, a rock garden, dry streambed, rock pool and a swimming pool all make excellent firebreaks.
Create fire-safe zones with stone walls, gabions, patios and driveways closer to the house.
Preferable materials for boundaries are concrete, stone or bricks and mortar.
Fences made of recycled plastic are highly combustible so avoid them.
“In the Garden” is written by feature writer, garden enthusiast and former teacher Julia Smith, who has returned “home” to live in Chintsa East. The column looks to inform both novice and accomplished gardeners how to make the most of their green patches.