Mercury Insurance has put a name to a quieter idea in California wildfire mitigation: firescaping. In a press release distributed via PR Newswire, the insurer reframed wildfire-smart landscaping not as the wholesale removal of greenery, but as a series of design choices about how outdoor space is arranged and maintained — and where combustible material sits relative to the house.

"Many homeowners think wildfire mitigation means removing everything from their yard, but firescaping is really about making smarter choices around how outdoor spaces are designed and maintained," said Holly Sacks, Director of Portfolio Underwriting and CAT Management at Mercury Insurance, in the release. The message is pointed at a real anxiety: that a defensible landscape and an attractive one are mutually exclusive. The insurer's argument is that they are not.

Where the risk actually concentrates

The release anchors its guidance in work from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) and CAL FIRE, both of which emphasize reducing combustible materials closest to the structure — particularly within the first five feet, an area the industry now calls Zone 0. According to the PR Newswire release, this band is treated as critical because embers frequently accumulate near foundations, vents, fences, decks, and landscaping features during a wildfire event.

That detail matters more than it first appears. The dominant ignition pathway in wildland-urban interface fires is not a wall of flame arriving at the property line — it is wind-driven embers landing in the small zone where the building meets the ground. A wood mulch bed against a foundation, a stack of firewood under an eave, or a combustible fence touching the cladding can convert an ember into a structure fire. Firescaping is, in essence, a discipline of subtraction in that five-foot band and thoughtful substitution beyond it.

Firescaping translates directly into the regulatory language California carriers already use. The state's Safer from Wildfires framework, recognized by the California Department of Insurance, lists 12 mitigation measures across three layers — structure, parcel, and community. A clear Zone 0 sits at the parcel layer, and insurers are required to recognize verified mitigation.

What it means for the LA market

For Los Angeles homeowners navigating a tightened insurance market, the significance of a release like this is less the advice and more the source. When a carrier publicly frames landscaping as a measurable risk lever, it signals that the parcel — not just the building — is being underwritten. Firescaping is the most accessible entry point into that conversation: it requires no permit, no structural change, and can begin in a weekend.

The first five feet around the house is the cheapest insurability upgrade in California — and the one most often overlooked.

But firescaping also exposes the limits of a parcel-only strategy. A homeowner can clear Zone 0 flawlessly and still own a combustible envelope that an ember can ignite from above or through a vent. The smartest reading of the Mercury release is as one move in a layered game: the landscape reduces the number of embers that find purchase, while the structure determines what happens to the ones that do. The two layers are complementary, not interchangeable — and underwriting increasingly rewards homes that address both.

For LA's fire-exposed luxury corridors — Malibu, the canyons, the Westside hillsides — this is also a design opportunity. Mediterranean planting palettes, gravel and stone thresholds, and low-fuel ground cover are not concessions to risk; they are a coherent aesthetic that happens to perform.

Looking ahead

Expect Zone 0 to move from voluntary best practice toward codified expectation as California's regulatory architecture matures. As more carriers publish firescaping guidance, the homeowners who treat the perimeter and the envelope as one continuous design problem — rather than two separate line items — will hold the strongest position when the next renewal letter arrives.

Our Perspective
What we appreciate about firescaping is that it moves the conversation from the yard to the threshold — the line where landscape meets structure. But that line cuts two ways. Plant choices reduce the fuel an ember finds; the envelope decides what happens if one lands anyway. At My Villa we design that perimeter as a single non-combustible system: a five-foot Zone 0 of stone and fire-smart Mediterranean planting — olive, lavender, succulents — meeting reinforced concrete walls with no wood frame to feed. The Mediterranean palette firescaping recommends is, conveniently, the palette of the Italian villa we already build from. Resilience and the garden are not in tension here. They are the same design decision, made once.