Signs of life in Sonoma County’s burned landscapes

It seems like many months have gone by since the fires began on October 8. For those affected, treasured family homes are gone, the familiar household is just an open bare site, and life has changed forever. Gardens mean a lot to us, and are far more than just a composition of plants outside. Gardens personify the idea of home - and are a place for us to connect with both our neighborhoods and nature in the outer world. With the advent of spring and warmer weather, many people are beginning to contemplate what is left of their gardens, and to plan what a future landscape will look like. Those of us whose homes were not affected by fire are looking at our home landscapes with new eyes, and considering how to make them more fire-safe.

Initial rains greened up the landscape and provided needed water, resuscitating many burned plants and trees and easing the visual damage. Seeing green among the brown and blackened landscapes gives us hope, and a sense of renewal.

I visited a number of fire-affected home landscapes recently. They varied greatly in the degree of damage they suffered and their state of recovery. Some of the sites were only lightly damaged and it looks like they are recovering rapidly; others were more severe, with most trees just charred caricatures of themselves. Some neighborhoods escaped with a few houses destroyed, and a random sprinkling of plants burned - but are now considering the composition of their landscapes very differently than before the fires. These landscapes exemplify the range of the intensity and duration of heat and the degree of damage from the fire. Each will require a different approach to assessment, recovery and replanting, and can serve as examples for some of us to begin to develop plans for our own landscapes going forward.

The hilly Mark West Springs area had some of the most heavily damaged landscapes - some areas with 100 percent of the trees burned and missing leaves, twigs and all small branches - all indicating the high intensity and duration of heat from the fire.

Waiting for oaks ?to resprout

It is a sad landscape, and property owners are waiting anxiously for signs of resprouting from the beloved oaks that dot the landscape. It takes between a few months to six years for oaks to resprout.

Those that are severely burned and overhang powerlines, roads and new houses are being cut, with many others left in less sensitive sites for now in the hope they will green up.

Some native shrubs like toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) are already resprouting, giving a sense of hope for the rest of the plants.

In a steeply sloped area like this, it will be important to cut off dead shrubs and trees at ground level to maintain slope stability, rather than pulling out the roots or stumps - except when they are in the way of construction.

Replanting some oaks and native shrubs on sloped areas will help with soil stability over the long run.

Slope stability is an important consideration in steep areas. As this area was also in the path of the Handley fire in 1964, it would be an interesting exercise to count the tree rings on the trees that are cut down to see if most of the trees grew after this fire - or survived it.

I visited another house in the Mark West Springs area in a valley surrounded by a large, mowed meadow and sparse groves of oak trees. Although most of the houses in the neighborhood burned, the house survived.

Oak in ashes

The burn area came so close to the house that it blistered the exterior paint. Two fences burned right up to the house, then stopped, and a big oak next to the house was just a ghostly imprint of white ash on the ground.

Rosemary was reduced to ash, while the swaths of catmint (nepeta) had evidently served as ember catchers. Burned spots were visible, but had gone quickly out.

Much of the garden had been low-growing groundcovers such as teucriums, catmint, Jerusalem sage, Christmas roses, and perennial geraniums that provided little fuel for the fire.

A sprinkling of the oaks had burned, while others just had scorched leaves and were already resprouting among singed leaves.

The deciding factor in redoing the garden is the water system, which was destroyed and won’t be back online for a year.

On the other end of the spectrum was a ridge above Bennett Valley - a landscape covered by oak trees. It is an area of rocky soil and many of the trees are gnarled and full of character, and of small to middle size, which probably reflects the shallow soil.

Sadly, most of the houses are gone, but the intensity of the fire appeared to have been fairly light. Many of the leaves were scorched and brown but not completely burned off.

Some oak trees were already growing vibrant green new leaves through scorched ones. Here and there the base of an oak tree was burned, making its survival uncertain. Fir trees and redwoods were burned more severely than the oaks.

In some cases, the fire just burned the forest understory and did not climb up in the tree crowns, and the leaves of some eucalyptus that had been limbed up to 8 feet or more were intact.

Dainty white flowers

The forest understory is now sprinkled with a magical profusion of the dainty white flowers of milkmaids, Denaria californica, a wildflower, and snowdrops, an early non-native spring bulb.

In short, this looked like a landscape that will recover quickly from the fire. Recovery has already begun.

Homeowners are already planning a low-water but lush-looking landscape that will be sympathetic with the needs and aesthetic of the oak trees and the limited irrigation water available.

First on the landscape’s to-do list, while houses are under construction, it is used to screen from neighboring properties with new shrubs.

A third property I checked out was in the Fountain Grove area. The house survived, as did a number of others in the area due to the efforts of firefighters.

They stationed themselves in the neighborhood and aggressively protected the houses from fire, putting out embers and hosing houses down. Nonetheless, there were houses at the margins and areas of gardens that burned.

You could trace the haphazard spread of embers by wind from the pockets of burned plants or fences.

The deciding factor of survival seemed to be the proximity and number of firefighters to the houses and perhaps some shelter from winds bearing burning embers.

Now that spring is here, homeowners there are thinking about how to make their neighborhood more fire-safe and more easily defensible, but still colorful and beautiful.

One homeowner wants a brilliantly colored and uplifting garden that will be a visual gift to the neighbors and all who drive by, to help them keep spirits up in trying times.

For fire safety in the future, keeping open space mowed behind and around houses is a high priority, as well as thinning and removing large and highly flammable trees and shrubs right next to houses, such as large and dense palm trees, big junipers, dense cedars and overgrown lavender, rosemary and grevillea.

Replace them with low growing, less flammable, and high-moisture-content plants.

Kate Frey’s column appears every other week in Sonoma Home. Contact Kate at: katebfrey@gmail.com, freygardens.com, Twitter @katebfrey, Instagram @americangardenschool