Most of the attention on Zone 0 has gone to fences and decks, which is understandable and is also not where most of the rule lands. The bulk of what changes in the first five feet around a house is planting, and the risk right now is people over correcting, tearing out a garden and putting down gravel when they did not have to.

What The Rule Is Aimed At

Zone 0 is the first five feet measured out from the house, including out from decks and anything attached to it. The logic is ember driven. Homes are more often lost to embers landing on something combustible right against the building than to a flame front arriving, so the rule targets the material sitting in that band.

The Three Year List Is Mostly Housekeeping

For an existing home the schedule runs in two parts. The first, within three years, is loose combustible material rather than living plants:

Firewood stored against or near the house
Dead leaves and branches
Mulch and wood chips within the first five feet
Gutters cleaned out
Dead and dying plants removed
Trees trimmed

Read that list again and notice what is not on it. It is not a ban on having a garden. It is firewood, dead material, and bark mulch. The single most commonly missed item is the mulch, because it looks tidy and reads as landscaping rather than as fuel, and it is one of the easier things for an ember to start.

The Five Year List Is The Built Stuff

The second part, within five years, is where local jurisdictions set timelines for the under eave area, for replacing combustible gates, and for adjustments to sheds and fencing. That is the part that costs real money, and it is also the part with the longer runway.

What To Put Back

Here is where an honest article has to be careful. The rule is about removing combustible material from that band. It does not arrive with a state approved planting list, and anybody selling you one right now is ahead of the evidence.

What is not in dispute is the direction. Well irrigated, low growing and actually maintained is safer in that band than tall, woody and dry. Bare mineral surfaces such as gravel, decomposed granite, pavers or plain soil are the simplest way to comply. Living plants are not automatically the enemy, and a green, watered plant is a very different thing from the same plant left dead in place.

If you want a specific plant list for this band, the people worth asking are the native plant organisations rather than a fencing site. The Theodore Payne Foundation and the Arroyo Seco Foundation both run nurseries in this area and both know the local species far better than we do.

Where The Fence Comes Into It

The connection between the planting question and the fence question is the part people miss. A fence running into the wall of a house is a continuous line of material leading to the building, and so is a bed of bark mulch running along that same wall. The rule treats both as the same problem.

On a Glendale foothill lot that usually means the same answer to both. Change what is in the last five feet before the wall and leave the rest of the run alone. That is a much smaller job than the one most people are picturing.

There Is No Need To Rush

The rules were approved on August 19, 2026 and are expected to take effect around the end of September after Office of Administrative Law review. The three year clock for existing homes has not started yet. There is time to do this properly rather than expensively.

This is a summary of the approved Zone 0 requirements as they stood on August 29, 2026, and not advice. Local agencies can adopt stricter versions. We are a fence referral service, not fire professionals or landscape professionals. Check what applies to your address before removing anything.