Category Archives: Flora

Protecting your home from wind-driven wildland fires

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“Protecting your home from wind-driven wildland fires using landscaping, vegetation, and home maintenance” is a PDF e-book with 25 pages and over 125 photographs.

Protecting your home from wind-driven wildland firesI wrote it after some Texas prairie fires decades agoago and updated it after the 1988 Yellowstone fires, the 1991 Oakland Hills fires, the Southern California wildland fires of October 2003 and October 2007, and the Texas fires of 2011.

With warmer weather already here in San Diego, and the type of brush we have on our hillsides, wildland fires are always a possibility. If you or someone you know lives in an area subject to wildland fires (and that’s about 90% of America), please help me distribute this little guide to your family, friends, and business associates.

Fire on the hillsideWe can be proactive in using landscaping, vegetation, and regular and easy home maintenance to provide the initial protection for our own homes which then makes it much easier for fire fighters to protect our homes if we are forced to evacuate.

Download a free copy at About Homes.

It’s a large file (3.6 MB), so be patient while it downloads, especially if you’re on dial-up or other slow Internet speeds.

Please distribute it far and wide with my blessings.

This post approved by Zoey the Cool Cat

Do your plant due diligence — Part three

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Any guesses where the following picture was taken?

Tropical paradise in the San Diego Mediterranean desert

If you cheated and said that it was somewhere in San Diego County just because I live in San Diego County, you’re a good cheater, the best.

San Diego’s temperatures define it as a Mediterranean climate. Its rainfall defines it as almost a desert, and many parts of the County actually are a desert. Basically, San Diego is a Mediterranean desert, so almost anything will grow here if you provide it with its basic water needs.

People who move to San Diego often find that they are homesick for the plants, trees, and flowers they had back home. What they wind up doing is landscaping their home so that it looks like “back home.”

Therein lies a problem, though.

San Diego averages about 11 inches of rainfall a year. Most of the water for its three million residents comes from the Colorado River and the San Francisco East Bay Delta. People who plant lush, tropical landscaping in San Diego are impacting the water supply for the whole region, and it’s not going to get better.

When I inspected the property shown in the photograph, I mentioned that the tropical landscaping was inappropriate for a desert climate and specifically recommended that they ask the Seller for copies of the water bill. They might be shocked at how high the water bill was.

Not responsible for advice not takenSeveral months after close of escrow, my Clients called me wondering if I had broken something during the inspection because the water bill was so high. I didn’t even need to pull up the pictures of the property to remind me of their house. Some memories last a lifetime.

I asked them if they had gotten copies of the water bill like I recommended. They didn’t.

I explained again about their tropical landscaping and told them to call the water company and get the monthly amounts for the previous years. I bet they would be similar. They did. They called me back to apologize for accusing me of breaking something and told me that the water bill had been that high for several years. No surprise to me. That’s mature tropical landscaping.

Moral of this story? It’s always worthwhile to ask the Seller for copies of the gas, water, and electricity bills to determine if you’ll be able to live in the house after you buy it. If the Seller refuses to provide them, you can always (in my experience) get the amounts from the utility companies if you explain to them that you’re thinking of buying the house.

Do your plant due diligence — Part two

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If you missed Part one, find it here: Do your plant due diligence — Part one.

Whenever I do a home inspection, one of the first things I do is simply walk around the property looking at things. One day I took this picture:

Cyperus needs lots of water

The Client buying that property told me on the phone while scheduling the inspection that he had some concerns about sagging floors. No doubt….

Those lime-green plants in the two small sqaures are cyperus, a plant that needs a lot of water to survive. In order to get that water in San Diego with its Mediterranean desert climate, someone has to water them. They won’t survive on our annual average of eleven inches of rain.

Those two square planters are not planters at all. That’s where one would crawl under the house — plumbers to fix leaks, home inspectors to check out the foundation and plumbing, and children to escape punishment.

I couldn’t get under the house but I was pretty sure that the area in that corner — the kitchen and dining room inside — had floor problems. I was correct. All I could do is tell my Client what I thought was going on because I don’t have the luxury of tearing out the Seller’s plants while doing an inspection.

Moral of the story? Just because you see some dirt doesn’t mean you should plant something there. If you do plant something there, do your plant due diligence to determine how big it gets and how much water it needs.

Join me tomorrow for part three.

Do your plant due diligence — Part one

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My wise old grandmother, Mary Agnes KirkSeveral decades ago, my wise old grandmother introduced me to cactus and succulents. The rest is history.

I’ve taken that interest and developed it into a passion for landscaping, a passion that complements my passion for real estate and my career as a home inspector. My love of plants and real estate has developed into an intense interest to help people understand how the wrong tree, bush, or ground cover can have devastating effects on their home, effects that might not become visible until many years later.

Here in San Diego, virtually anything will grow because of our Mediterranean temperatures. With the proper amount of watering, those things will grow tall and wide. Some that you’ve never seen bloom before will bloom.

When I was growing up in South Texas, I was quite proud of my Norfolk Island Pine (also called a Star Pine) that had grown to six feet in ten years. Here in the canyons of San Diego, it’s not uncommon to find Norfolk Island Pines that are 35 or 40 feet tall, also in ten years.

Schefflera (umbrella plant)The umbrella tree, or schefflera, is the same. We Texans were proud if they were six feet tall and still had all their lower leaves. Here in San Diego, they not only grow to 20 feet tall, but the darn things bloom! And beautiful blooms they are, too.

Unfortunately, because everything will grow here, people plant plants in the strangest places. Notwithstanding our desert environment with an average of 11 inches of rain a year, people will water their plants to make sure they grow big and strong.

Here’s an example of a ficus tree which not only grew big and strong, but its root system grew wide and destructive:

The tree next door

That tree was not at the home that I was inspecting; it was next door! Yet it had not only destroyed the foundation of the home in the picture, it had also destroyed the foundation of the home to the left, the home that I was inspecting.

Moral of the story? Don’t fall prey to the grocery stores that sell the cute, little ficus trees at all times of the year. Those cute, little ficus trees grow to be big, monster, destructive trees. So do many other small plants commonly sold in grocery stores, discount stores, home improvement stores, and, of course, at plant nurseries.

Join me tomorrow for part two.