- Rather than surround your fire pit with bare dirt, rock, stones or brick, you can grow soft, attractive, fire-resistant ground-cover. Wild strawberry plants easily spread and fill in areas for an attractive ground-cover in USDA zones 5 to 9 and are recommended by the Los Angeles County fire department as an approved fire-resistant ground-cover. Other fire-resistant low-growing ground-cover plants are bugleweed, pussytoes, kinnikinnick, snow in the summer, ice plant, sedum, hen and chick and speedwell.
- No plant is completely fireproof; therefore, don't grow plants and shrubs immediately adjacent to your fire pit, though there are many fire-resistant plants that will thrive a few feet away. Yarrow, penstemon, sea thrift, columbine, basket of gold, trumpet vine, bergenia and sedges are hardy perennial plants that can grow near fire pits.
- Whether you choose an evergreen or deciduous-type shrubbery as part of your landscaping around your fire pit will tie the elements together and give the area an inviting appearance. Select flowering, fire-resistant shrubs like cotoneaster, rock rose, daphne, lavender and rhododendron or evergreens like boxwood or holly. Attractive, fire-safe deciduous shrubs for your landscape are serviceberry, maples, dogwood, spirea, sage and burning bush.
- Common sense tells you not to locate your fire pit where tree branches overhang above the fire, which doesn't mean you can't position the fire pit close to trees. Because of the thick bark and high moisture content in the foliage, Western Larch and Poderosa Pine are the preferred conifer trees for fire resistance. Alders, maples, birch, oak, hackberry, sycamore and redbud deciduous trees are attractive landscape trees that complement a fire pit.
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