How to Help Garden Plants Recover From Fire

Will garden plants that were singed or burned, but not incinerated, in the recent fires survive? There’s a good chance they will rebound as quickly as the native vegetation.

Landscape architect Owen E. Dell, who was one of the designers of the Firescape garden in Santa Barbara and is currently on the Firewise Landscape Task Force, observed that many plants recovered fully after the disastrous June, 1990, fire there. He suggests this course of action:

--Small plants that appear extensively damaged can be cut to the ground. Many will re-sprout from the roots, just as the native chaparral plants do.

--Large plants, including trees, may recover even if it doesn’t look likely, if you practice a little of what Dell calls “benign neglect.” “Don’t do anything, even prune, just let them sit and be ugly for a while,” he says and they may surprise you.

He suggests merely watering plants to get them to sprout, hopefully before rains arrive. Any kind of plant cover will help hold the soil together during the rainy season.

After the Santa Barbara fire, he saw plants such as California pepper, oleanders and oaks leaf out within weeks. Others took longer.

One Japanese elm that looked like it had exploded from inside, fully recovered in about a year.

Certified arborist Bill Spiewak cared for a number of trees damaged in the Santa Barbara fire and he agrees with the do-nothing-for-the-fire-year approach. The only exceptions are those plants where he says and they may all the bark has obviously burned off, exposing the wood underneath. These plants are most likely dead since the all-important cambium layer just under the bark is damaged.

He cautions that after the Santa Barbara fire, “opportunists” went through the neighborhood telling people that they should cut their trees back to stubs. “This is the worse thing you could so,” Spiewak says. “The trees need every branch to make enough leaves to recover.”

“Don’t make any decisions for the tree,” he says. Let it show you what is dead and what is alive.

He suggests this plan:

--During the first six months to a year, do nothing but deep water the trees and irrigate other plantings.

--At the end of that wait-and-see period, have any large, dead limbs removed, but leave as much new growth as you can so it can manufacture food for the plant.

--At the end of the second year, restructure the trees by selectively pruning smaller branches that are growing in the wrong place. This is sometimes called “lacing” or “opening up” a tree or large shrub and this pruning should make the tree attractive again.

At Magic Growers in Altadena, Bert Tibbet, who lost his home in the fire, says the first thing to do on burned-out properties is to get the water back on, even if it means digging a hole behind the meter and rigging up some temporary plumbing so you can water. Water companies typically turn off the water after a house burns because the plumbing is so damaged.

Horticulturist Joe Brosius agrees with Dell. “Don’t be too hasty,” he says, to take out plants. With trees you want to keep, wait a season, even a year before giving up on them. Quite a bit of Magic Growers nursery stock was damaged in the Eaton Canyon fire, but there are already signs of life, even on plants where the plastic nursery containers melted away, leaving the roots exposed.

One little native Sisyrinchium was burned down to the potting soil but new sprouts appeared almost instantly. They are going to wait and see with other plants.