Part 6
Establishing a new garden takes time, and to ensure that is effective in the years to come it will require regular ongoing maintenance to protect the defendable space around your home.
Regular maintenance actions for the garden as part of your Bushfire Survival Plan should include:
- Clear ground fuel from underneath plants and around the house.
- Re-mulch with non flammable materials, such as stone, shells or other non-flammable materials.
- Prune plants with low hanging branches, providing separation of at least 2m from the ground.
- Replace diseased, stressed or dead plants. Ensure to replace with low flammable plants as per my previous post.
- Keep plants well hydrated through watering and mulch. Watering less frequently but for longer encourages the plants to develop deeper roots and therefore reducing moisture loss during hot spells.
- Remove other flammable objects from within your defendable space.
- Remove any fine, dead material that has accumulated within plants.
- Remove weeds from the defendable space.
- Mow lawns and keep regularly hydrated.
(source: CFAVIC Landscaping for Bushfires, 2011)
(all photos in this article by: Kerri Fennell)
Please stay safe for the rest of this bushfire season. That is the end of this series of posts. Im really looking forward to sharing with you over the next few weeks some other things I have been working on lately. How to make a pallet garden for your herbs, filing cabinet planters, design lessons learned along the way, and my week in Bali.