Six Ways to Use Landscaping to Improve Your Home Safety
Although home burglaries are trending downward overall, more than 800,000 break-ins still occur each year. Besides the potential for damage to your property and loss of your belongings, there’s also the concern for your family’s safety—no one wants criminals roaming around your home.
The obvious solution is to use technology – alarm systems and surveillance cameras . While these kinds of systems can definitely help protect your property from unwanted guests (and give you peace of mind), there is more you can do to ensure the safety of your home. Your landscaping is a surprisingly key element of your home’s safety—or can be if you plan it carefully. Here are some simple ways your home’s exterior design can help protect it from intruders.
Keep your home’s entrances visible
The first thing to consider when it comes to safety and landscaping is visibility. Lots of tall, lush plants can give you the feeling of a cozy retreat, but also offer plenty of places for people to hide. Trimming hedges, shrubs and other plantings to around 2-3 feet tall will give you a clear view around your property and can also help eliminate those obstructions and make it easier to use those security cameras you paid for.
Having lots of plants around your windows and doors can give you privacy and shade, but it also means someone can get close to your home to work on door and window locks without being seen from the street. Your neighbors won’t be able to help you if they can’t see what’s going on. And dense landscaping around your front door means someone could be hiding to wait for you to get home or open the door.
To make your windows and entryway safer , keep them clean. If you use protective plants, keep them trimmed low and away from windows and doors. You should be able to easily see the area around the apertures from different angles.
You can also increase visibility by avoiding opaque features such as walls or fences and instead choosing transparent options such as picket fences, chain-link fences or trellises.
Choose thorny plants
One way to turn your landscaping into a weapon against intruders is to place “defensive” plants around access areas such as first-floor windows. Thorny and prickly plants, densely spaced around these areas, create a natural barrier for those trying to enter your home. It may not have the same visceral thrill as freeing a pack of hounds, but it will definitely make the intruder think twice while he heals his wounds.
Some examples of good protective plants include cacti (including some mild-climate species such as prickly pear), thorny rose bushes , whale’s tongue agave, or thorny plants such as barberry. Whatever climate or design you’re working with, there’s a plant that will make life uncomfortable for anyone who tries to approach your home.
Trim the trees
If trees are part of your landscaping , you should keep them away from your home ( 8 to 20 feet away, depending on the size of the tree) for a variety of very good reasons (like problems with the roots of your foundation or damage to your roof). But if your trees are closer, or if they are mature and their branches have creeped closer to the house, you should hire an arborist to trim them. Prune both horizontally (so that no one can get to the window or climb onto the roof) and vertically (so that there are no branches lower than seven feet or so above the ground) to prevent anyone from climbing up. Unpruned trees can provide cover or a ladder for thieves and other intruders, so trimming them regularly is a very good idea.
Skip the grate
You may love the sight of a climbing plant climbing up the walls of your home, but if it involves a trellis or trellis, you should reconsider your decision. A grate or lattice attached to (or leaning against) an outside wall is essentially a ladder that someone can climb up to gain access to an upper floor window.
Use gravel to cover the soil
One way landscaping can improve the security of your home is by making it more difficult for intruders to enter. Rough gravel used as ground cover around access points such as windows will make noise when walked on, making it much more difficult for someone to approach undetected. Of course, it won’t be as effective as an alarm system, but in the dead of night, an unusual noise can alert you or your dog to the presence of an unwanted guest outside.
Add lighting
One of the most obvious ways to improve the safety of your home in terms of landscaping is by adding plenty of lighting , especially motion-activated lights. Being able to clearly see your outdoor spaces reduces the likelihood of someone being able to gain access to your property undetected, and the sudden flood of light will deter trespassers hoping for cover of darkness. When planning your landscaping, be sure to include reliable lighting to make it as safe and secure as possible.