It’s Fire Season

Andrea Hurd • September 18, 2024

Cultivating Resilience

How you can help fight climate change by watering your garden

Gardens help cool the planet and prevent fires

As the reality of climate change looms larger, the need for individual action becomes imperative. Our weather is growing hotter, rain patterns are erratic, and fires across the Western US are increasingly more destructive. Dry soils lead to greater fire risk due to the nature of how firesburn hotter and more ferociously when the soils are dry. In addition, dry soils disrupt the water cycle and exacerbate the drought cycle. This is what we call the Drought Dilemma.

A diagram of the water cycle with arrows pointing in different directions.

The Cooling Power of Plants

Properly hydrated soils and green growing plants are a powerful way to fight against climate change. Through transpiration, plants release moisture into the air, forming clouds and bringing much-needed rain. Thriving plants contribute to a cooler planet, creating a positive feedback loop that counters the effects of climate change. When plants are lush and thriving, the air surrounding them also has more moisture. One can feel a reduction of the temperature in the air when walking from a dry hot sidewalk, and into a green garden.

"I think the messaging of watering gardens is a good one. Great advice to the community."

~Duncan Allard, WUI Fire Inspector, Berkeley Fire Department

Two wooden chairs are sitting in the grass in front of a house.

A bunch of orange flowers are growing in a field.

Wild flower garden with low water needs

Our current combination of years of dry air and dry soil has created conditions where recent fire events have literally turned into fire storms. Fires feed on dry air, dry soil and dead plant material. As the planet gets hotter and drier, and more plants are drying out or dying, conditions become more favorable for fires to get worse year after year. It is a negative feedback loop!

We are witnessing how disastrous this cycle has become, and how it is worsening every year. In the Western US, the “fireseason” starts earlier and lasts longer every year. Increasingly, the destruction from larger and larger fire events is not just limited to wilderness areas. The threat of fire has encroached on our towns and our cities, ravaging homes and communities.

During the drought years, local municipalities have put bans and restrictions on how much or when we are allowed to water our gardens. In many instances, this exacerbates fire conditions. This becomes part of the Drought Dilemma, as these restrictions prevent the aquifer from being recharged, increasing the amount of dried soil and dead plant material. For many homeowners, these restrictions just result in dead, dried up lawns and hydrophobic soil.

In addition to reducing the water added to your garden, municipalities and local fire departments are encouraging residents to keep a 5 foot area around the house clear of plants. The assumption is that the homeowner is not properly watering their plants (safe to assume as watering your garden has become taboo during the drought!), resulting in dry soils with dead plants that can light up against your home and increase the fire risk. Dry brush and dead plants against your house is definitely a real risk, and it needs to be prevented through garden maintenance.

Keeping it lean and green

Dry soils and dead plants contribute to exacerbated fires and fire conditions, perpetuating a dangerous cycle. On the other hand, moisture and humidity from healthy plants minimizes firedamage. Property with adequately hydrated soil and thriving plants can minimize or even thwart a fire that is raging in the area.

At Mariposa, we have actually observed our gardens (and the homes attached to them) spared in areas where wildfires raged around them. In one of our gardens, the moisture in the soil and the thriving plants surrounding the structures literally stopped a wildfire in its tracks. This just shows that it is crucial to understand how we can play a role in minimizing fire risks by continuing to irrigate our gardens.

"The fire department's message is a bit more complicated than simply asking residents to "keep areas around the house clear of plants."We ask residents to keep it "lean and green" and get rid of dead and dying vegetation. "

~ Duncan, Berkeley Fire Department**

A stone walkway in the middle of a forest surrounded by trees and bushes.

Redwood understory garden

The solution: water your garden

If you are properly taking care of your garden, and not allowing the soil of your garden to dry out, the green plant material on your property will actually minimize your fire risk.

When your plants are well hydrated, they transpire and add moisture to the air. This helps reduce the intensity of any fire that may occur near your house. In addition, any moisture in the soil will help to minimize the type of fire storm activity we have seen in the last couple of years.

As plants grow, they capture carbon dioxide and release oxygen, and they also release moisture. That moisture goes on to create clouds and rain. If we break this cycle by insufficiently watering our gardens and allowing our soil to dry and our plants to die, we are hindering the water cycle. And when drought decreases the amount of rainfall, the worst thing that we can do is to stop watering our gardens.

We need green growing things to help cool our planet, and to create clouds.

"Fires feed on oxygen, heat, and fuel - in this case, we are suggesting that dry and dead plant matter contribute to the fuel available to fires and increase homes' vulnerability. 90% of home ignitions are actually caused by ember storms and slow-moving ground fires often after a wildfirecomes through an area. This is why we are asking residents to pay particular attention to the immediate area around the house (0-5 feet) and Zone 1 (5-30 ft). Most of the fire departments that we interact with are asking residents to pay particular attention to zones 0 and 1 and keep their gardens lean and green. Watering gardens, indeed, contributes to this goal and we appreciate you letting folks know."

~ Duncan Allard, Berkeley Fire Department

Water does not belong in pipes or storage tanks. It belongs in the earth. The earth is becoming more and more parched. As we think of ourselves as stewards of the earth through our gardens, we can combat extreme drought, intense fires and furthering the heating of the planet by watering our gardens.

For additional information on fire safety from the Berkeley Fire Department, please visit berkeleyfire.com. Thank you for reading and please share!

A stone walkway leading to a house with a lot of grass and flowers.

Permeable drivable meadow installed by Mariposa (Saxon Holt)

We are moving to Substack! Since our current newsletter platform, Mad Mimi, is ending on August 30th, future newsletters will be coming to you from our Substack. You can view future Mariposa newsletters in the Substack app, or on your browser. We will also be uploading them to our website if you prefer to view them there.

We'd love for you to stay connected so make sure to follow us on Instagram @mariposagardening where we will start sharing links to our newsletters when they are posted.

< Older Post

A bunch of pink flowers are growing in the grass.

Habitat Gardens

By Andrea Hurd • September 12, 2024

Gardening connects us to nature. It also invites us to think like scientists. The garden is our laboratory where experimentation, observation, and evaluation are a part of the process.

Two women are standing next to each other holding a certificate.

We Won the CLCA 2023 Beautification Award for Small Design/Build Installation!

By Janet Richardson • June 21, 2024

We're so excited to announce that we won the California Landscape Contractors Association 2023 Beautification Award for Small Design/Build Installation!

A person is walking along a path next to a lake surrounded by trees.

WATER IN YOUR GARDEN AND IN THE EARTH

By Andrea Hurd • June 30, 2023

Is the drought over? Do we still need to conserve water in our homes? Can we go back to watering our gardens? Folks who live in Northern California, where we have been experiencing extreme drought conditions for the past several years, want to know.

A patio with chairs and a fire pit in the backyard of a house.

Lithohydrology: The art and science of moving water through a landscape using dry laid stone work.

By Andrea Hurd • May 17, 2023

LITHOHYDROLOGY Harvesting water through the use of dry laid stone work

A New Year's Tale of Getting Your Garden off to a Good Start!

By Andrea Hurd • January 10, 2023

How we prep for planted areas at Mariposa

Garden Care And The Drought

By Andrea Hurd • January 2, 2023

As the drought lingers in California, and concerns about how to save water are at the forefront of our minds, many of us are thinking about how we can best conserve water in the garden.

A bunch of red and yellow flowers are growing in the grass.

MEET THE GARDEN CARE TEAM

By Andrea Hurd • August 31, 2022

Kari and Allison have been working as co-leaders on The Garden Care Team since last fall. The team is committed to implementing Mariposa's philosophy of “Find your home in nature.” Meaning, they are working with nature, rather than against natural systems, to care for all of our gardens. When we asked Allison, who is an experienced gardener, how she thought we stand out from the rest, she said, “At Mariposa, we are much more concerned with the functionality of plants and role of plants. Not just what looks good but how they can provide habitat. How they provide year round nectar sources rather than just the aesthetics of year round color, yet we still accomplish the same level of beauty as any high end garden when we focus on pollinator and wildlife needs.” From left to right: Kari and Allison loving a Mariposa garden How we do it To make sure our client’s garden habitats stay in balance, we practice an ecologically based way of designing and caring for our gardens. This requires planting a diverse array of pollinator friendly plants and grasses, as well as providing water, food and shelter for any beneficial insects that may want to visit your garden. Some of the things we do during our garden care visits are: * fertilizing with organic fertilizer, * checking and adjusting irrigation seasonally, * hand picking weeds, * employing non-toxic and organic methods of pest management, such as hand picking or spraying with water * planting cover crops in vegetable beds in the winter to boost the soil fertility and * annually apply compost and mulch to the entire garden for soil health. An assortment of native and pollinator friendly plants in all of our gardens promotes a medley of native bees, wasps and other pest predators that keep down pest pressure. The variance of plants and beneficial insects ensures that your garden stays in balance as an ecosystem, which makes it very low maintenance. When we install our gardens, we implement methods such as flame weeding and sheet mulching to control weed pressure. We work to build up the health and texture of your soil so that it will hold water longer, and make it available to your plants, even during a drought.

A garden with a beehive in the middle of it

Introducing Mariposa's Round the Block Farms

By Andrea Hurd • April 8, 2020

We are living through interesting times Covid-19, the coronavirus, has us all in a new situation, but we are living through it together. Sheltering in place means a large proportion of our communities are home a whole lot more than we used to be. Sheltering in place disrupts our normal schedules, distances us from our family, friends and co-workers. This isolation and finding new ways to adapt to it, forces us to refocus and realign our lives. Some of us are still working, albeit at home, which means we probably have jobs that require us to spend a lot of time in front of a screen. Some of us in service industries considered “non-essential,” such as landscaping, are sitting at home too - but with a bit of time on our hands. All of us have questions and anxieties. When will this end? How will I continue to pay bills and feed my family safely? What if the supply chain breaks and I can’t get things my family needs? All of us at Mariposa share in these feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. Particularly when it comes to food. That’s why we’ve chosen to use our collective skills to help our community grow food. As a cooperative, serving our community is one of our bedrock principles, and it’s at the heart of our decision to launch a new service. We’re expanding our business -- historically focused on creating garden sanctuaries for humans that support and regenerate the natural environment -- to now also provide more food security for our community.

March 22 is World Water Day!

By Andrea Hurd • March 18, 2020

This post was crafted by our South Bay Manager and Crew Leader Elizabeth Sarmiento. Her life has been an unbroken string of social justice and environmental activism. You can learn more about her work Here. World Water Day provides us with the opportunity to focus our attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. In 2010, the United Nations recognized “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights”. However, 2.1 billion of people today are still living without safe drinking water. This happens even in our own country - 70 million people in the USA may be affected by health-based contamination of water, including lead, copper, arsenic, and other contaminants.

A stone path in a garden surrounded by flowers and plants.

Pruning for Health and Seasonal Interest

By Andrea Hurd • February 10, 2020

At Mariposa, we have a particular way of working with plants that is geared toward understanding and honoring the nature of each species. It can take a long time to learn each plant, but a few tips on ways to “listen to plants” can help all gardeners become more skilled in the art of pruning. When we say “listen” what we mean is to observe them and the way they grow closely. This practice means you don’t necessarily have to read a book on how to prune each plant (though that is also very helpful and highly recommended--especially for fruit); instead, you can find patterns in the way certain plants grow that can be applied to a number of species. There are some general rules of pruning, however, and this post covers the basics that you can use to get started on pruning most of the trees, shrubs and perennials in your garden.