Ok, it was painful getting here, and I did whine, but posting is way easier

Yes, Leyland Cypress will be risky in a wildfire type situation, and the same is true of all evergreens, whether they are broad-leaf evergreens or conifers. I don't know if Leyland has a sap that actually explodes like eastern red cedar does, but it will burn like crazy. All evergreens are more of a fire risk than deciduous trees, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to forego them completely.

You probably can find lists of suggested fire-safe plants (none are fire-proof, but some don't ignite and burn as much as others) at the FireWise website, which should be accessible via links at the Texas Forestry Department or the Oklahoma Forestry Department. Or, you can find more info on FireWise landscaping by Googling FireWise or Firescaping.

Firefighters prefer you keep an envelope of 30' of open ground available on all sides of a building to give them access to protect your home during wildfires, but you can get away with a lot less. It is important to keep trees and shrubs (no matter what kind they are) far enough away from the house that fire cannot climb those plants like a ladder to reach the house and catch it on fire. I'm not good about planting stuff farther out from the house---I want it up close to the house to shade it, so Tim and I are going to have to negotiate some compromises as we redo the landscape to make it safer. We've already taken out all the evergreens on the north and northeast side of the house. I'm hoping to be able to keep the ones on the south and west sides, but we may limb up the Burford hollies like trees instead of leaving them as shrubs.

Tim and I have been taking out most of the landscaping we did after we built the house in 1999 and redoing it to be more firewise. I hate it, but we are so surrounded by Post Oak Savannah where fires run rampant that it is the smart thing to do. I'd rather have a forest of trees and shrubs around the house to shade it, but I know how easy it is for fire to spread from those to the house, so I'm trying to formulate a new landscape plan that will make the fire chief happy and that will keep me happy too. We still have one groundcover type juniper at the northwest corner of the house. It is about 3' tall and 8' wide, but it is close enough to the house and to the fenced dog run that I think it has to go. I'll miss it as it is about 15 years old and it has tolerated repeated drought so well.

Kim, I've long know how horribly cedar burns, but last year our neighbor's place, catty-corner across the road from us, had a grassfire that burned his pine trees that served as both a wide break and a privacy barrier. The tallest must have been 30-40' tall and they were so lovely. And....they burned like crazy. I hoped that maybe enough of those trees survived that they'd rebound. Nope. Not a one of the burned ones did. I hoped some cones that had fallen to the ground over the years might have left seeds there that would germinate and grow replacement trees. Nope. It didn't happen. I remember thinking that those pines burned just as fast as the cedars did, but to me it seemed the cedars burnt hotter.....that is an observation just from standing and seeing them burn. It might just be the cedars were more dense so had more limbs and foliage to burn.

Thank you. Our best friends are fire fighters as well as my brother in law. Since moving to central OK, I have been extremely fire sensitive. In 2012, I was in a business meeting, my Hubs storms in says simply, "Fire near the house" and out I ran, as did every one else. We are leasing the land around us just to take out the cedars. But I need a spot light break from the neighbors. Even though they are quite a bit away, light travels far. A burford might be the answer, We , too are in negotiations regarding the landscape. Junipers are gone, but I doubt he will let me take out the tiny blue spruce.

Thank you. You guys will never know how un-alone you make me feel.

Again, thank you so much.

You're welcome. I wish we could lease our neighbors' land and take out all the cedars near our south fence line as those are uncomfortably close to our house. When we come home from one of those wildfires where firefighters from many departments have rushed from house to house for hours to save the homes from a rapidly advancing wildfire, I always want to take out all our landscaping and have nothing but very short plants mulched with stone. Then I get over it because we need some shade in the summer. I have become very fire-sensitive too because we have had far too many big wildfires in the last decade. FireWise landscaping was the last thing on my mind when we moved here in the late 1990s but nowadays I consider it as a part of every landscaping decision we make.