Your go-to selection guide
How to Use the Guide
This guide includes a variety of easy-care plants commonly found in local Tahoe nurseries. Choosing the right plants and caring for them properly can make your garden more resistant to wildfire. Bring this guide to a local Tahoe area nursery.
The plants featured in this guide have fire resistant characteristics:
- High moisture content
- Low and moderate growing habits
- Low combustibility levels
- Low maintenance
- Seasonal die back which reduces woody debris (shrubs excluded)
Zone 0
Ember Resistant Zone: 0 - 5 feet
No plants or flammable materials are recommended within this zone. Use gravel, stones, decomposed rock or other hardscape materials
Zone 1
Lean Clean and Green: 5 - 30 feet
Incorporate small amounts of vegetation, discontinuous ground covers, plants and isolated shrubs
Zone 2
Reduced Fuel Zone: 30 - 100 feet
Maintain shrubs and small trees
Ground Covers
- Bugleweed, Ajuga reptans
- Creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia
- Creeping Phlox, Phlox hybrids
- Creeping Sedum, Sedum spp.
- Creeping Speedwell, Veronica spp.
- Creeping Thyme, Thymus hybrids
- Evergreen Candytuft, Iberis sempervirens
- Lamb’s-Ear, Stachys byzantina
- Strawberry, Fragaria spp.
- Wall Germander, Teucrium spp.
Part Shade/Sun Plants
- Creeping Lamium, Lamium maculatum
- Bishops Weed, Aegopodium podagraria ‘Variegatum’
- Hosta, Hosta spp.
- Western Sword Fern, Polystichum munitum
- Lungwort, Pulmonaria spp.
- Siberian Bugloss, Brunnera macrophylla
- Columbine, Aquilegia spp. and hybrids
- Lady’s Mantle, Alchemilla mollis
- Cranesbill, Geranium spp.
- Avens, Geum spp. and hybrids
Sun Plants
- Bee Balm, Monarda hybrids
- Black Eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta va. pulcherrima
- Catmint, Nepeta spp.
- Coreopsis, Coreopsis spp.
- Daylily, Hemerocallis spp.
- Echinacea, Rudbeckia spp
- Lupine, Lupinus spp.
- Penstemon, Penstemon spp.
- Shasta Daisy, Leucanthemum maximum
- Stonecrop, Sedum spp.
- Yarrow, Achillea hybrids
Shrubs
- Chokeberry, Aronia spp.
- Chokecherry, Prunus virginiana
- Dogwood, Cornus stolonifera
- Japanese Barberry, Berberis thunbergii
- Lilac, Syringa spp.
- Sierra Currant, Ribes nevadense
- Snowberry, Symphoricarpos alba
- Spirea, Spiraea spp.
- Thimbleberry, Rubus parviflorus
- Willow, Salix spp.
Project Partners: Created in partnership between the University of California Master Gardeners of Lake Tahoe and the Fire Adapted Communities program to highlight a sampling of easily available plants within the Tahoe Basin.
Funding: This project was funded due to the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which authorized the sale of BLM administered federal lands within a designated boundary in the Las Vegas Valley and required proceeds to be used on projects to fund federal, state and local projects that benefit communities and public lands.
The attached document is for PRINT USE ONLY and may not be ADA compliant for digital use. Print the document (or this page!) and bring it to a local nursery.
