White Oleander question

Factual Questions
1

I’ve got a great “nature fence” around the front of my yard… very large white oleander hedges. I’m aware they’re poisonous if you eat them, but it was never an issue, except now my newborn has grown into a toddler and we’re getting a little nervous.

So we’re looking into getting rid of them and planting something else. Any suggestions?

Here’s the benefits of oleander –

very drought resistant – important here in SoCal
grow extremely easily – nice and large for privacy
relatively fire resistant – as opposed to bamboo, which I THINK is extremely flammable… am I wrong?

We’re looking for other large, easy to maintain hedges that will get regular sprinkler treatment but don’t need massive quantities of water, and which are somewhat fire resistant and not poisonous. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

2

While I applaud your parental conscientiousness in desiring to rid the kiddo’s immediate surroundings of all possible poisons (I myself once meticulously planned a flower garden around those very parameters, back in the day), still I’d have to balk at ripping out a perfectly good hedge. He’ll only be of an age to randomly put objects into his mouth for a year or two; by the time he’s three, he’ll be up to speed on the concept of “don’t eat this over here, it’s nasssssty.”

Since the hedge is in the front of your yard, how much unsupervised playtime are you planning the kidlet will have in the front yard? If he’s not going to be playing there alone very often (and personally I wouldn’t leave a toddler in a front yard, call me paranoid but there it is), then I’d leave the hedge alone. If he’s going to be out there with a certain amount of adult supervision, maybe put up a temporary fence in front of it, just to slow him down on those “grabby” days, like those orange mesh snow fences?

Be a shame to waste a perfectly good hedge, is all.

ETA:

Oh, and, bamboo is invasive.
Don’t.

3

You make some very good points. My parents said a similar thing… I just hope we don’t accidentally track in a “dead” leaf and he sticks it in his mouth That’s worries me as well.

4

What he said, and if you put in bougainvillea it will make you wish you had put in bamboo.

5

Talk to your pediatrician and see what he or she says. Ask how many reported cases of oleander deaths there have been in SoCal. Those things grow all over the place, and you’d think if there was a real danger being posed, we’d hear about kids dropping dead everyday.

6

FYI I just did a quick google on bamboo… apparently most strains are invasive, but there are some that are much easier to control and don’t grow as wild. Still, it takes a lot of it, tightly packed, to keep critters (like coyotes) out of our yard, so that wasn’t a choice we were really leaning towards.

We’re going to seriously consider just keeping what we’ve got. But are there really no alternatives that make sense?

7

Sure there are; people are just asking if you really want to rip out a whole hedge. We have a lot of mock orange around here, it behaves similarly but is not AFAIK poisonous. You could look into that.

I ripped out all my oleander. It’s poisonous and I don’t like it anyway, except on freeways. I like the freeway oleanders a lot. Worked for me.

8

I don’t know if I want to rip it out yet or not, but I’m definitely considering it. For sure, one of the considerations will be what kind of comparable replacement hedge we can get.

Mock orange, hunh. Not familiar with it. I’ll add it to my list of investigative options.

9

There are a lot of Texas privet hedges down in Cali–they make me sneeze like nobody’s business so I’m quite happy they aren’t nearly so prevalent up here!

FWIW, I raised two kids with oleander growing all around us and never had a problem–watch them when they’re young, then tell them the stuff will kill 'em when they’re big enough to listen.

I notice that lots of people still keep dieffenbachia as house plants, and that stuff will mess up kids or pets pretty good…

10

One of my friends refers to oleander as “freeway flowers”.

11

Oleander isn’t so toxic that you die if you simply put a leaf in your mouth. Your toddler will presumably have enough adult supervision that it would be immediately noticed if he had something in his mouth. According to the feds, you have to chew on the leaves, not merely put them in your mouth. The Urban Legend about the troop of Boy Scouts who died from merely using oleander twigs for wienie forks is, um, an Urban Legend.

If you don’t intrinsically hate the oleander, why not just put up a quick ‘n’ dirty picket fence on the inside of the hedge? Sink a few postholes, attach some picket fence panels (plastic or wood, your call), make like an oversize baby gate in front of it, and then when Himself is old enough to understand the legend of the Oleander Wienie Roast, you can tear it all down.

Which of course won’t remove the problem of oleander leaves blowing or being tracked into your house, but hey, he could die from being stung by a wasp or hit by a falling meteorite or space debris or something. You take reasonable precautions, yes, but then you just have to try to relax. You can’t raise him in a cocoon. :wink:

Also, decoding garden-speak here: something that’s “less invasive” is still “invasive”. It’s just “less invasive” than that other invasive stuff over there, but it’s still “invasive”.

The “less invasive” bamboo is “less invasive” in the sense that the pod people were “less invasive” than the War of the Worlds Martians.

An example: Spearmint is invasive. Lemon balm is supposed to be a “less invasive” mint. I planted spearmint, which took over my entire back yard; I’ve had to beat it back every summer with those flamethrowers Ripley used on the aliens. And I planted lemon balm, which admittedly didn’t take over the entire yard, but I am still finding it popping up all over the yard in random places.

So the lemon balm was “less invasive” only in the sense that I don’t have to get out there every July with heavy equipment, but it still isn’t staying where I put it, dammit.

12

As for bamboo and fire, when I burned a bamboo stump on a bonfire, the flames rocketted to about 15 ft high. People thought I’d chucked petrol on it.