GARDENING : Cheers for Ice Plants Hold Water in Laguna

Ice plant, the ground cover that was king of the hill in the 1970s and deposed in the ‘80s and ‘90s by landscapers and Caltrans, has become a hero in the aftermath of Southern California’s firestorms. The plant is in demand once more--this time for its fire-resistant nature.

The low-growing succulent stores water in its fleshy leaves, and that high moisture content seemed to slow and even stop advancing walls of flame in Laguna Canyon as well as Topanga Canyon and Malibu’s Las Flores Canyon.

“Ice plant saved my home,” said more than one fire survivor in television and newspaper interviews. And when Laguna Gardens nursery in Laguna Beach reopened after the fire, residents bought out the entire stock of more than 3,000 ice plants.

Today, ice plant has become such a symbol of survival that Laguna residents are sending flats of it to each other in lieu of other flowers.

Since the fire, Laguna Traditions Florist has been inundated with orders. “People who want to say, ‘Thanks for letting me stay at your house,’ or ‘I’m sorry about your fire damage’ are sending ice plant instead of roses or traditional fresh arrangements,” said clerk Ann Grose. Meanwhile, shop owner Theodora Poole-Cardenas has been scouring nurseries for ice plant flats, which she then decorates for her customers.

Landscaper Marty McPhee describes ice plant as “probably the most fire-retardant plant there is.” McPhee drove through Laguna Beach after the fire and saw slopes where fire had burned up to the ice plant and stopped. His firm, Southern Counties Landscape, just finished planting ice plant on slopes in a Del Mar development. And ice plant covers the hillsides near his San Clemente home.

“When in bloom, it’s one of most attractive ground covers and one of most drought-tolerant,” he said.

After the fires, plant expert Robert Perry of Cal Poly Pomona was asked for a list of fast-growing, fire-retardant plants. He included white trailing ice plant. Ice plant is on the Laguna Beach Fire Department’s list of fire-resistant plants as well.

But don’t rush out and invest in ice plant futures just yet. Not everyone has been converted.

Critics say the ground cover’s water-retaining qualities make it so heavy it can cause slopes to slip in the rain--although the heavy-leafed Hottentot fig variety that used to be the major culprit is rarely used today.

Ice plant also harbors snails and rodents and invades other plantings, its critics say. And modern methods of slope planting have made it less expensive to spray seed over large areas than to hand-plant ice plant cuttings.

And then there’s fashion. Like everything else, plants go in and out of style. Despite California’s fires, native plants--which most ice plants decidedly aren’t--are the favorites of most landscape architects these days.

Still, ice plant does deserve consideration.

Rather than the heavy Hottentot variety--also known as Carpobrotus or sea fig--that fell into disfavor, there are nearly a dozen other types on the market.

The new varieties are all drought-tolerant and fire-resistant. Most have nice, sometimes striking, flowers; almost all grow like weeds.

The most popular are rosea, a small-leaved plant with spreading sheets of glossy pink flowers; Lampranthus, a shrubby variety with shimmering near-neon purple flowers; white trailing ice plant that offers nice foliage and quick cover, and red apple, an ice plant relative with tiny flowers that bloom almost constantly.

Soil and slope steepness are important considerations in deciding to use ice plant.

Soil with a high clay content becomes jellylike when it gets very wet, and shallow-rooted ice plant saturated with water can slide down such a slope--taking a thick layer of soil with it.

Frederick M. Lang, a South Laguna landscape architect, planted ice plant for years. But in projects where slope slippage has been a potential problem, he emphasizes native plants.

Ice plant does better in rocky soil and in sandy areas where it actually binds the soil together for erosion control, Lang said. Heavy ice plant can be good ground cover on many slopes--but not on those that are steep or that have soil that doesn’t drain well.

As it happens, ice plant is in the news at the right time of year: planting time.

To start a patch, gardeners can buy flats of a favorite color at a nursery or take cuttings from existing growth and plant them. The winter’s rain will get the roots started, but the plants won’t do much growing until the soil warms up in the spring.

Ice plant needs to be watered until it is established. But after that, too much water can kill it. Nursery growers say Southern California homeowners tend to overwater hillside ice plant in the summer months.

Several landscapers said that although it is a low-maintenance ground cover, ice plant looks better when fertilized once a year, watered in severe droughts and replanted when dead patches develop--as they often do.

“It takes typical maintenance. No plant is bulletproof, but you see dead patches less with red apple than other ice plant varieties,” said McPhee. As for rodents, anything that covers the ground is attractive to rats, mice and their kin, he said.

A summer annual ice plant, a variety of Mesembryanthemum, is edible. Similar to New Zealand spinach, it can be found at the beaches and in the hills.

“During the right season, I lunch on it,” Lang said, adding that it tastes salty.

Barbara Brinkerhoff, owner and horticultural director of Lifescapes, a landscape architecture firm in Newport Beach, doesn’t make a meal of it but admits that she likes ice plant too.

But she likes it best in combination with other plants. On the slopes in front of J.M. Peters Co.’s Belcourt development on MacArthur Boulevard in Newport Beach, her firm incorporated a variety of trees, shrubs and ground cover--including ice plant--for a continuous blooming effect.

“We use it for just sheer beauty and durability. But not everybody loves ice plant; most clients say it’s too common,” she said.

Brinkerhoff’s firm did a lot of work in Emerald Bay, and she mourns the loss of the eucalyptus and pines there--two types of trees regarded as highly combustible because of high oil content. She fears that if Laguna’s neighborhoods are landscaped strictly with fire-retardant plants when rebuilt, they will never look the same.

She’s not alone. Jeannette Peapp, who works for Laguna Beach landscape architect Robert Truskowski, worries that homeowners will replace their landscaping with nothing but ice plant. No trees, no native plants.

“The hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I heard people saying, ‘Ice plant saved my house,’ ” she said.

The state highway department virtually banned the succulent from its freeway plantings in 1991, but the official reason wasn’t problems with slope slippage. Rather, it was the switch to a water-saving irrigation system that waters individual plantings with low-flow sprinkler heads. Ice plant, with its sprawling growth pattern, can’t be watered this way, said Kevin Tong, landscape architect with Caltrans.

The ground cover was abandoned earlier by landscapers in favor of plants that root more deeply on hillsides and don’t retain as much water.

Dale Rahn, a landscape architect with Village Nurseries, remembers the ‘70s as a time the plant was everywhere.

“When housing started moving out into the foothills here, ice plant was king. It was uniform, consistent, didn’t require much water. But it just moved out of popularity,” he said.

In Los Angeles’ Hacienda Heights neighborhood where he grew up, Rahn recalled, slopes covered with heavy Hottentot fig would come down every winter--as regular as the rain.

White trailing ice plant eventually replaced the Hottentot fig in popularity. But the flower is so insignificant that Rahn thinks the variety has “kind of gone out of style because what you see is just green.” Lampranthus, the intense purple that drivers see on Southland hillsides in the spring, is slow to cover and erratic in establishing itself, he said.

Tough, fast-growing plants like acacia redolens and myoporum have become the primary slope plants in Orange County, and Rahn doesn’t see an ice plant resurgence, despite its firefighting performance.

If it does make a comeback, it will likely be a trend generated by homeowners rather than landscape professionals who have grown accustomed to designing without it.

“Ice plant will always be around. It’s popular with homeowners because of the profuse blooms and because it’s readily available,” said McPhee.

And the image of it as a barrier to fire is one that may indeed give it another opportunity to be king of the hill.