Designing fire-smart landscapes in Colorado

In the face of increasing wildfire threats, a water district in northeastern Colorado is helping communities rethink how they landscape — not only for aesthetics or water conservation, but for safety.

Northern Water, which serves eight counties from Boulder to Fort Collins, offers free landscaping templates that prioritize three principles: fire-smart (meaning low flammability plants with defensible space), water-wise (or drought tolerant), and pollinator friendly (contributing to biodiversity).

The trifecta was ambitious, admits Lindsay Nerad, water efficiency specialist at Northern Water and one of the template coordinators. “There were a lot of iterations of these designs,” she says, but ultimately, it was worth it. The plans satisfied requests that came out of various meetings with community members.

Fire-smart design, in particular, was central to those conversations. The priority grew out of the devastation of the Marshall Fire, which claimed two lives and destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the region in December 2021. While drought conditions, coupled with winds over 100 miles per hour, contributed to the fast-moving blaze, homes in the region were often surrounded by cedar fencing and dry vegetation that fed the flames.

Drawing from a similar initiative by the Sonoma-Marin Saving Water Partnership and from resources like Idaho Firewise, which rates plants based on flammability, the templates from Northern Water help homeowners avoid risky choices — like planting junipers close to their homes. “Junipers are very combustible,” Nerad said. “Having those within 100of your house is a big firewise no-no.”

In total, Northern Water offers six templates to explore. Each has a different theme, such as naturalistic or contemporary geometric, and includes a wealth of information: design guide, landscape plan, irrigation plan, pollinator detail, water use estimate, probable material cost and a maintenance manual. And there’s something for everyone: corner lots, large lots, cul-de-sac properties (or pie lots), and more.

“We wanted to give people all of the information so that they were able to make choices,” Nerad said. “If things didn’t fit for their yard, they still had good resources — like plant lists, a maintenance manual, and a design guide that are just full of information.”

The templates include front and back yard designs and offer options for full-sun or full-shade plants and everything in between. The plant list focuses on native plants, specifically ones that are available locally. “We wanted to make it accessible to people so that instead of having them going around everywhere trying to find a Western Sand Cherry, we recommend the Pawnee Buttes, because that’s the one that’s more commercially available.”

She added: “The reception has been great, and people are thankful.”

That flexibility has also made the templates popular beyond district boundaries. Organizations like Headwaters Economics have featured the templates as a model for other regions.

And soon, the templates will come to life. Northern Water is installing three demonstration gardens on its campus — two front yards and one full-yard design — to truly show community members how they can surround themselves with safer, greener native spaces. As Nerad put it, “Hopefully we’ve done something that helps people make better choices.”