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When I was in middle school, there was a show that premiered called It Takes a Thief, where the hosts would break into people’s houses to ultimately help them secure their homes. I would rush home after school and watch the show on the Discovery Channel while I prepared my lunch before practice. While I watched its full two season run, there was one really odd thing that stuck out to me as they would case the houses they would rob. On many occasions, the foliage and landscaping would influence their selection of houses to approach for the show.
[https://simkl.com/tv/5397/it-takes-a-thief/episodes/]
This observation stuck with me for years after the show had stopped airing regularly and I decided to do some research. This led me to a field of landscaping focused on security and defense of the home. Many of the considerations that were listed were primarily to defend and protect against home invasions. As I learned more about this defensive form of landscaping, I found some interesting ideas that I wanted to pass along to you.
[https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/how-to-use-your-yard-to-keep-burglars-away.html/]
The primary objective of defensive landscaping is to prevent the home from being a target to begin with. With that in mind, visibility plays a key role. Most burglars will specifically look for buildings or houses with low visibility from the street and use that as a hiding spot while they watch the comings and goings of the residents. The easiest way to remedy this is to install exterior lighting to increase visibility at night. Another way to help increase your visibility is to keep bushes or hedges in the area under 3 feet tall.
While a thief is casing a house, they are also looking at potential points of egress, ways to get into and out of the area quickly with their potential loot. Around half of all home burglars gain entrance via either the front door or first floor window. This is another area that can be defensively landscaped as well. While the most visually appealing way to secure these entry points is to plant low thorny bushes like roses or blackberry bushes. There are simpler methods, such as placing gravel around the bushes and up walkways can create enough noise to deter would-be thieves and attract the attention of anyone nearby.
[https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ideas/foundation-planting-basics]
Burglars also make note of the most minute of details. Even if a house has the aforementioned items, they would still take a chance on a home if the yard is unkempt. Surprisingly, lawn maintenance can play a pivotal role in helping prevent burglary as well. If a yard is overgrown or trees and bushes untrimmed, it could mean that the residents are out of the house for an extended period of time. This means easy pickings for a thief. To keep up the appearance of an occupied house, hiring landscaping team to provide upkeep or even installing synthetic turf will help.
[https://gardenseason.com/lawn-care/]
Defensive landscaping isn’t a surefire way to prevent burglaries from happening, but they certainly assist in creating a harder target to burglarize. These are just some of the many compelling facts that I found, and I would love to learn your best security-minded fact and hear your most unbe-leaf-able stories!
[https://www.tumblr.com/search/leaf%20puns]
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