Like all Australians, I watched with horror as Black Saturday
exploded across Victoria. The black and grey landscape
resurrected memories of Ash Wednesday: my father describing
standing on the roof of our Adelaide Hills family home with his
fire hose. “I might as well have been p*ssing on the flames for
all the good it did,” he said.
Add memories of my grandparents in the adjacent district of
Paracombe, where they’d moved from suburban Adelaide as they
neared retirement age. My childhood friend, who’d spent
countless summer holidays with them, had rented the log cabin on
the neighbouring property with her partner. They abandoned it
and rushed to help.
They found my Opa hosing radiata pines on the ridge, intending
to stop the fire before it crested the hill and traveled down to
the house. Yes, with so many recent televised images bringing
the scale and power and destruction of bushfire into our living
rooms, this sounds ridiculous to us today, but my Opa was an
European immigrant and city dweller for whom the reality of
bushfire was as alien as a Martian dust storm. It was with great
difficulty that my friend persuaded him to return to the house,
barely in time.
The fire leapt the ridge and blazed down the slope. Inside the
house, my grandparents and my friends slapped out embers with
wet towels while windows exploded and down pipes melted. As the
smoke thickened they crawled between rooms, dousing flames. And
then the fire passed.
Unlike so many houses in Victoria recently, my grandparents’ and
my parents’ homes survived: a combination of luck, geography and
structure rather than of strategy. My grandparents’ iron-roofed
brick house was a simple rectangular shape set into a 3m deep,
sheltering cut-and-fill on a hillside. My family home sat atop a
vulnerable ridge, but a 6-metre high Perspex and metal windbreak
fence and acres of concrete protected it from more elements than
had ever been anticipated.
The loss of a family home is a hideously heart-rending and
life-changing event, and I in no way wish to compare my family’s
experiences to those of families who have lost homes, or worse.
But this is a gardening column, and so in this context – and in
this context alone – I consider: what of my grandparents’
garden? And what of gardeners in high-risk bushfire regions
today?
Much-Loved Gardens
Regular readers know that my Opa and Oma loved their garden – it
was their retirement joy and gave meaning to their lives. They
spent most of each day outdoors and, because their garden was so
productive, it formed an equally integral part of their indoor
lifestyle. Jams, nuts, dried and bottled fruit filled their
pantry, while another room housed potatoes, pumpkins, and
apples. My grandfather collected honey from his beehives and
sold strawberries, raspberries and red currants from a roadside
stall. The extended family never needed to buy eggs!
My grandmother’s native garden – established long before natives
became fashionable – teemed with birdlife on the slope downhill
from the house. All was destroyed… or so it seemed.
An astonishing number of apparently-dead plants survived: not
only fire-adapted natives, but also roses, bulbs, fruit trees,
bramblefruits and even runner beans regrew from rootstocks and
epicormic shoots. However, although my Opa and Oma rebuilt the
garden, they no longer felt entirely safe, and some years later
moved back to Adelaide where their new yard quickly filled with
more vegetables, fruit and flowers.
Regulations, Water Restrictions and
Practicalities
By this time, my partner and I had moved into our own home in
Crafers West in the Adelaide Hills, a stone’s throw from a ridge
road notorious for its fire risk. Much excellent advice about
protecting homes from fires is available (see links below) but
doing it is often more complex than is immediately apparent.
First, Native Vegetation removal regulations often conflict with
building regulations governing recommended clearance zones
around homes for bushfire safety. However, in streets with many
suburban rather than rural-sized properties, clearance
regulations are impractical, because there could not then be a
single plant on the entire block! And yet, as we’ve seen
recently, a street of houses in a high-fire risk zone can be at
equal risk of destruction as a single home on acreage. A code of
practice goes some way to resolving this, at least in South
Australia, but issues remain complex:
http://www.dwlbc.sa.gov.au/native/fire/cop.html
Second, significant tree legislation – which affects not only
natives, but large trees of any origin - means that I require an
arborist’s report and council permission to remove even one of
the two (non-endemic) towering spotted gums in our front yard.
I’ve heard reports that explosively flammable radiata pines have
been refused removal through this legislation as well. However,
after the recent bushfires, I suspect that many rural and
semi-rural councils will change their approach to the removal of
significant trees (especially trees like my spotted gums that
are significant only because they’re large, and not because
they’re endemic, rare or old).
Third, water-wise garden advice recommends heavy mulching and
drought-tolerant plants. Such plants often have small, dry
leaves and volatile oils that also make them highly flammable.
Similarly, flammable tufty native grasses and lilies are
replacing sappy agapanthus and clivea (both highly fire
resistant) in gardens everywhere. And any organic mulch
increases fuel load, in direct contradiction to fire protection
principles.
Fourth, water restrictions have meant many gardens in high risk
areas are especially dry, with brown lawns and half-dead twiggy
shrubs credibly impersonating kindling. Some homeowners (not
readers of Global-Garden, I’m sure!) have simply given up,
leaving completely dead plants in situ. Having seen Canberra
gardens both before and after the fires there, I’ve no doubt
that water restrictions and the subsequent state of gardens
directly contributed to the loss of houses.
Compromise
Like all gardeners living in high-risk areas, my garden is a
compromise between a scorched earth policy and a pile of
kindling. On a small suburban-sized block just 50’ wide and 160’
deep, with houses immediately to the south and an easement to
the north, recommended clearance zones extend beyond our
property boundaries! Still, I live in a pocket of suburbia, not
suburban Adelaide. With Belair National Park a kilometre to the
west, Cleland National Park a few kilometres to the north plus
large areas of privately-held stringybark forest and steep
gullies without extensive road access all around, we would need
to plant much more carefully than in a truly suburban area.
House in the Garden
Memories of Ash Wednesday still fresh, we contacted our local
CFS within weeks of moving into our new home; a representative
visited at no charge to advise on ways we could make it as
fire-proof as possible within the tight budget of a new
home-owner. He deemed our house relatively low-risk because it
had a southerly aspect (fires are most likely to approach from
the north), because it was nestled into the hill in a
cut-and-fill, because it was brick with sarking under the tiled
roof (although iron is better) and because it had a simple
rectangular shape with a clean, low-pitched roofline and few
nooks to catch embers (http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/fire_safety/building_a_home.jsp
). However, he advised metal flyscreens for the windows,
judicious pruning of the two willow myrtles downhill and south
of the house and, most importantly, the screening with metal
flyscreen mesh of all the vents in the walls, notably unmortared
drainage gaps in the lower course of brickwork that would
otherwise allow ember entry into wall cavities. We also
inspected the roof space from inside, using chinks of daylight
to locate and block any holes.
http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/fire_safety/spark_and_ember_proofing.jsp
Outdoor Structures
Stone or steel garden structures such as retaining walls and
patios are obviously preferable to timber ones, and for that
reason our ageing railway sleeper retaining wall, which we
should not have chosen in the first place, will be replaced by a
cement modular one in a few years time. Our carport and verandah
are entirely of steel and colorbond; although we’d have
preferred more light entry, we decided against plastic panels
that melt during fires. We laid brick and crazy paving to the
north and east of the house.
Plant Choices
All plants can and will burn, but some are less flammable than
others (http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/fire_safety/preparing_your_home_for_a_bushfire/landscaping.jsp#Locatveg
). Choose plants with broad, fleshy leaves and/or high salt
content, rather than those with fine hard leaves and/or high oil
content. Plants with dense foliage and smooth bark are better
than those with open, airy crowns and rough bark. Avoid plants
that retain dead material, and maintain plants regularly (prune
and water).
In my garden, I chose native groundcovers but stuck to less
flammable exotic shrubs such as camellias near the house. A
mistake was the pink jasmine on the northern fence adjacent the
carport. It’s kept ruthlessly pruned to a 60cm wide, 1.2m high
narrow hedge, but the dead stems inside means its days are
numbered. I established a small apron of lawn in front of the
house to the west under the spotted gums. And, although I love
the appearance of roses or vines wreathing verandahs, I resisted
the urge to plant climbers on ours. Instead, three large tubs
containing two camellias and a Japanese maple soften the
profile. The pots can be moved away on days of extreme fire
danger, as can the potted fruit trees along the northern wall.
We retained a very old existing melaleuca on the front boundary
despite its fine leaves and twiggy growth. Nevertheless, I’m
waiting for it to die so I can replace it with a less flammable
quince tree.
Pruning and Lopping
When we moved into our new home, we immediately felled a
lemon-scented gum that was scarcely 2m from the house in the
front yard, but left both spotted gums (in hindsight, we should
have removed at least one of them before they grew large enough
to become “significant”). Together with a huge South Australian
blue gum on the nature strip, they create a large tree canopy to
the west, but the only saving grace is that this canopy is tens
of metres above the house, rather than level with the walls,
windows and roof. I regularly remove dead growth from trees and
shrubs, notably the melaleuca and willow myrtles.
Last winter, we employed professional arborists to fell a number
of small trees, including one of the willow myrtles we’d kept
pruned. More importantly, they worked within significant tree
regulations (which allow a degree of pruning) and removed
several large limbs from the spotted gums, including some that
overhung the house.
Mulching and Watering
I no longer mulch with pea straw in spring but instead use
smaller amounts of the less fly-away material generated by the
garden itself. In previous years, I also watered my garden
heavily to ensure plants were lush, with a high water content in
their leaves. With the advent of water restrictions, this was no
longer possible.
The answer: An Effective Bushfire
Sprinkler System
I’ve always had a fire plan, or so I thought. When my children
were young, it was to leave early. Later, it was to defend,
relying on a very lush garden and green lawn. But after a year
or two of drought, I knew I could not defend the house on mains
water, unreliable in a fire situation. At the very least, I
would need a heck of a lot more water because the plants were
visibly drier and more flammable. So, a few years ago, I
consulted a local CFS chap and he recommended a particular
company that installed effective bushfire sprinkler systems.
And effective is the key word. The CFS chap said he’d seen many
bushfire sprinklers on houses but that most were ineffective,
especially un-researched DIY efforts. Each system must be
tailored to the individual home and its situation. Although
anything is better than nothing, a few knocker sprinklers on the
ridgeline of the roof is likely to do little in all but the
least intense fires:
http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/fire_safety/preparing_your_home_for_a_bushfire/water_supply.jsp
Plastic pipes, tanks and fittings melt. Insufficient water
supplies or pressure, unreliable pumps, pumps uncalibrated to
volume output, sprinkler heads in the wrong place, with the
wrong volume, with the wrong droplet size… he’d seen it all. Not
only our houses but our lives may depend on that sprinkler –
surely they’re worth more than a few $3 heads from Bunnings? I
was far too embarrassed to admit that my previous fire plan
relied on mains water and just such heads – in spite of my
family’s experiences, I was as every bit as naïve as my
grandfather had been.
We bought a 16,000L steel tank (now supplemented by an
additional 5,000L), a pump, and had the sprinkler system
installed. It was expensive, but cheap when you considered its
purpose. It comprised all copper pipes and a double system of
brass heads, one set to spray the windows, walls, fascias and
under the verandahs and carport, plus strategically-angled
higher-volume large-droplet heads along the perimeter of the
roof to drench the area immediately around the house and the
roof. In fact, because our property is so narrow, the water
extends to the boundaries! The small size and simple rectangular
shape of our house helped, too. A fire hose (which can be used
simultaneously or separately) allows me to patrol right around
the house within the curtain of water and also all the way to
the back fence. The curtain is wide enough, robust enough and
wet enough to withstand all but the strongest winds generated by
fires.
It was only watching the sprinklers in operation for the first
time, and seeing how quickly and effectively they drenched the
area and created a sphere of water around the entire house,
walls and garden, that I realised just how inadequate my
previous plan had been.
Of course, the recent Victorian bushfires are unprecedented.
Reports that the blaze was so intense that it sucked up all the
available oxygen makes me wonder whether our pump might fail, or
whether I need to add oxygen to the gloves, goggles, filter
masks, woollen beanie and overalls on our fire shelf inside the
house. I’ll wait and see what recommendations arise from the
inquiry.
To gardeners like me who live in high-bushfire risk areas I say:
yes, like me, you’ll likely have made compromises in your
garden… but if you have, then don’t compromise on a quality,
professionally-installed bushfire sprinkler system.
Landscaping For Fire Protection – Basic
Tips
http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/fire_safety/preparing_your_home_for_a_bushfire/landscaping.jsp#Locatveg)
1. Site mown lawn or grazed grass immediately around buildings
2. Site driveways, tennis courts and swimming pools on the side
of the house most likely to be impacted by fire
3. Don’t create a continuous vegetation canopy from bushland to
house
4. Remove tree limbs that overhang the house
5. Clear debris and flammable vegetation under trees and/or
underplant with lawn
6. Remove debris and dead branches from trees and shrubs
7. Maintain moisture content of foliage with summer watering
8. Establish a windbreak (a more open one reduces turbulence)
9. Don’t plant trees or shrubs closer to buildings than the
distance equal to their mature height
10. Terrace steep sites and plant with fire-retardant species
11. Build stone walls, earth mounds or covered fences close to
the house as radiant heat shields
12. Site woodpiles away from buildings
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