Your spring planting guide for a beautiful, fire-resistant yard and garden

In The NoCo

Your spring planting guide for a beautiful, fire-resistant yard and garden

By In The NoCo,

Published March 28, 2025 at 5:40 AM MDT

Ways To Subscribe

The frame is full of small pinkish white flowers with yellow centers and a wooden fence behind. — Some homeowners are choosing more fire-resistant plants this spring for the yard and garden. Colorado State University Extension has recommendations for what to plant. Yarrow, pictured here, is one example.

Homeowners in Colorado鈥檚 foothills are used to the threat of wildfire. But after the Marshall Fire hit Louisville and Superior in 2021, some are taking wildfire mitigation more seriously. And how you landscape your yard is a big part of that work.

The good news is you can landscape your yard to be fire-resistant and beautiful at the same time.

Tommy Roth is a home horticulture coordinator for the who has been fielding a lot of calls from people with questions about how to do this. 鈥淭hey really need a lot of information to make sure that they're creating a defensible space to prevent another wildfire,鈥� he said.

And with spring planting season around the corner, Roth shared some advice with Erin O鈥橳oole about what to plant and where.

CSU Extension put together a guide to fire-resistant planting, which you can find . And you can explore your .

A graphic displays the planting zones in relation to a house.

Tags

In The NoCo

KUNC's In The NoCo is a daily slice of stories, news, people and issues. It's a window to the communities along the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The show brings context and insight to the stories of the day, often elevating unheard voices in the process. And because life in Northern Colorado is a balance of work and play, we celebrate the lighter side of things here, too.

See stories by In The NoCo

Ariel Lavery

Ariel Lavery grew up in Louisville, Colorado and has returned to the Front Range after spending over 25 years moving around the country. She co-created the podcast Middle of Everywhere for WKMS, Murray State University鈥檚 NPR member station, and won Public Media Journalism awards in every season she produced for Middle of Everywhere. Her most recent series project is "The Burn Scar", published with The Modern West podcast. In it, she chronicles two years of her family鈥檚 financial and emotional struggle following the loss of her childhood home in the Marshall Fire.

See stories by Ariel Lavery

Erin O'Toole

As the host of KUNC鈥檚 new program and podcast In the NoCo, I work closely with our producers and reporters to bring context and diverse perspectives to the important issues of the day. Northern Colorado is such a diverse and growing region, brimming with history, culture, music, education, civic engagement, and amazing outdoor recreation. I love finding the stories and voices that reflect what makes NoCo such an extraordinary place to live.

See stories by Erin O'Toole

Brad Turner

Brad Turner is an executive producer in KUNC's newsroom. He manages the podcast team that makes In The NoCo, which also airs weekdays in Morning Edition and All Things Considered. His work as a podcaster and journalist has appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition, NPR Music, the PBS 暗黑爆料hour, Colorado Public Radio, MTV Online, the Denver Post, Boulder's Daily Camera, and the Longmont Times-Call.

See stories by Brad Turner