LAndscape
Overview of Our Landscaping Plans
We developed these plans through a combination of observing nature around our property for many years before, then during and after the fire, and by studying resources like Las Pilitas’ tremendous website, the writings of Greg Rubin (whom we also consulted to make sure our plan made sense), Calscape, the Santa Monica Mountains Native Plant Society Chapter, and our wonderful local Matilija Nursery, where Bob the owner (pictured below) helped us select plants from the area and region and refine our planting process.
Before we could start refining and implementing our landscape restoration plans, however, we spent about 1 1/2 years digging out the post-fire mud, receiving permission to get a temporary electricity pole, and clearing the 160+ dead trees (see the Journal section for more about these rollercoasters).
The following goals have guided our plans:
Erosion control – Before the fire, erosion wasn’t an issue on our property. What worked then and the mudslides after the fires taught us how critical plants – and the right plants – are to keeping the hillsides stable. The top winner of the anti-erosion prize in the canyons surrounding us, the one plant that we have never seen mudslides bring down even in the heaviest rains, is toyon. Luckily many toyons sprang up naturally in the years after the fire on our property. We also planted over 100 more as our erosion control anchor, complementing them with evergreen native ceanothus, salvia, monkeyflower, and other plants that play well together to keep hillsides in our area stable. On the steepest hillsides, we put down coco fiber topped with gorilla mulch to help retain new plants.
Fire resistance and resilience – The fire took a lot of greenery, which was one of its saddest impacts, but watching what came back and what survived on neighboring properties taught us what plants are most fire resilient, and how the location, selection and proper care for plants can protect structures from fire. We were also guided by research from Las Pilitas and studies like this one by Jon E. Keeley, Greg Rubin, Teressa Brennan, and Bernadette Piffard. County Fire Department requirements for the fuel modification plan needed to acquire our rebuild permit also informed our direction. To see the fuel modification plan we created for the first 200 feet surrounding the building site, please click here. Part of fire resistance is also ensuring that occasional light irrigation is available during hot, dry seasons, drought, and fire conditions. You can read about our above ground, PVC-free irrigation system here.
Support for indigenous habitat – Supporting the restoration and conservation of plants native to Leo Carrillo State Park that surrounds us, and the broader ecosystem has also been a top priority. This has translated to enabling their natural return, propagating through seeds and acorns, planting more of these species bought from local nurseries where needed for erosion control and other benefits, and making sure other species of plants on the property are selected based on their ability to play well with native flora (e.g. are not invasive and do not have different water requirements unless planted at a safe distance).
Drought resistance – Where we live is a naturally dry climate and in recent years has been prone to drought, a vulnerability that is only likely to get deeper as the climate changes. Therefore, all plants in our selection require little to no supplemental water once established, unless they provide food. We also using mulch to retain water in the soil. The land below the larger trees and shrubs like oak and laurel sumac create plenty of natural mulch. Where we put in new plants, we used mostly a mix of mulch created from chipped wood from our many dead trees and extra oak leaves gathered from our driveways and walk ways. An exception is steep hillsides, where we used gorilla mulch, which tends to stick better. Some are concerned that mulch is a fire hazard. To mitigate this, we do not lay it down during our dry and windy weather cycles. The mulch seems to retains moisture pretty well with light irrigation, and the pay off of retaining soil moisture and supporting faster, healthier growth of new shrubs and trees, which in turn help cool the property with shade, not to mention provide beauty and support for pollinators, seems worth the risk to us.
Year round aesthetic beauty and sweet smells – Who doesn’t love living around pretty flowers and wonderful fragrance? We certainly do, and so do the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
Eating off the land – We also love to grow our own food and are restoring our organic vegetable and herb garden and planting about a dozen fruit trees. We compost out of organic waste, use mulch from our fallen trees, practice vermiculture, irrigate with captured rainwater wherever possible, and will allow our chickens to enrich the garden.
Timeline of landscaping highlights
2019 – 2023: Nature recovers and teaches
January 2019 – First growth of wild cucumber Marah macrocarpa out of the mud
March 2019 – Lupines, poppies and grass covered the hillsides in colors we’d never seen here
March 2019 – Our first taste of happiness , as wild cucumber spread on our barren hillside, and a most persistent rose sprang out of the ashes.
March 2023 – After two dry winters, heavy rains brought hillsides covered in Ceanothus Spinosus (Green Bark California Lilac) that started growing back starting the year before and now were 6 ft tall and higher.
May 2023 – The most abundant wildflowers we can remember covered the region.
June 2023 – Present: Planting and Maintaining
April-June 2023 – With rain and loss of so many trees came weeds that can be pretty, and nourish the pollinators with their flowers, but also inhibit flora diversity, don’t do much to prevent erosion with their shallow roots, and dry out quickly, making them a fire hazard. We spent several weeks pulling the invasive grasses, thistles and mustard out by the roots to support native plant restoration and fire resilience.
June 2023 – Our irrigation system was finally close enough to finished to start planting. We started with about 50 coastal live oak trees. Although nature was bringing back about 75% of the oaks on our property that went through the fire, along with many seedlings, we decided to plant about 30 oaks from nurseries and 15 raised from acorns or seedlings on or near our property, in order to accelerate reforesting on the hillsides.
Despite our frustration after years of delay due to one setback after another, there was a positive side of being forced to wait. For one, we did not end up needing to plant nearly as many new trees as we expected in the early days after the fire, when the hillsides appeared devoid of life. Not only did many existing indigenous trees surge back to life, but also new ones sprang up. Particularly black walnut grew rapidly. One that came back from a burned stump grew about 30 feet in five years.
October 2023 – Particular thought and care went into replanting the steep hillsides that had come down in mudslides over the first few years following the fire. When we moved to the property, these slopes had been covered in ivy, 30 ft tall Aleppo pine trees and eucalyptus. The pines all died from the smoke, heat, and dry air after the fire, the eucalpytus that had bounced back after the fire came down a couple years later in heavy rains (proving that they were not strong enough erosion controllers and accelerating our plans to remove them), and the ivy that had been great at holding up the slope was invasive and home to rodents. Learning and observing that a variety of evergreen native trees, shrubs, perennials and ground cover were good at holding up slopes in our region, we devised an erosion control plan mixing coastal live oak, toyon, California fuschia, native salvias, spunky monkey flower, California mallows, and a low growing ceanothus (Joyce Coulter) to tie it together. We planted low Salvia Bee’s Bliss and Seaside daisy as a low border. To help retain the new plants while establishing, we first installed coco fiber covered with gorilla hair mulch made from redwood and cedar trees.
July 2024 – The first harvest of our vegetable garden brought delicious snap peas, green beans, squashes, chard, and kale. We have also planted several fruit trees, although so far, critters have been enjoying most of the fruit before we have been able to. Hopefully, better cages will fix this. We have taken care to keep all these water-hungry plants several feet from the drought-tolerant flora and on separate drip irrigation lines, so no plants get improperly watered. We are also planting along the vegetable garden some cutting flowers with higher water requirements, which were gifted to us by dear friends or inherited from relatives and have too much sentimental value to simply give away.