How Thoughtful Landscaping Helps Deter Crime

Every year, nearly one million U.S. households fall victim to burglary, according to the FBI, leaving homeowners feeling violated and traumatized.

What if the house itself was the first line of defense?

Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) uses landscaping to deter thieves before they even consider targeting your home. It’s a practical, if underutilized, solution to dissuading unwanted visitors, and a simple way to amp up your home security.

Here’s how to do it.

Increase visibility around your property

Most criminals look for easy targets with plenty of hiding spots to duck into when they approach your house. Creating a well-lit, open environment is the first step to keeping people out.

You don’t have to turn your home into an impenetrable fortress. Simple things that increase the perception of easily being caught can be enough to prevent theft. You can clear debris and unnecessary structures like broken down sheds around your house and add a motion-activated flood light. And if you’re putting in trees or shrubs, choose species that still give you a clear line of sight after they’ve matured — thick, dense bushes close to your home can provide cover for someone attempting a break-in.

Create barriers that are difficult to breach

Walk around the outside of your home and pretend to be a burglar. Are there any side windows or scarcely-used back doors that provide access to the inside? Could landscaping make them harder to breach?

If your home is made of brick or has a stone veneer, rose bushes and other thorny, flowering hedges like Bougainvillea, Hawthorn and Firethorn can provide a good line of defense under windows. Just be sure to ask a local landscaper which species grow best in your area before you start planting. (If your home is made of wood, consult a contractor, too — moisture from plants can sometimes lead to wood rot.)

If you’ve got the funds, it might be worth fortifying the actual boundaries of your property.

A tall, wrought iron fence is difficult to scale and easy to see through, providing visibility from inside the home. A low fence combined with a thorny hedge can also work as a deterrent against unwanted visitors. Large rocky borders — favored by many homeowners in the southwest — are another great option.

Install an alarm system

Not all lighting and alarm systems have equal impact on criminals.

When shopping around, look for a security system that can quickly notify emergency services in the event of a break-in. The best security systems also have motion sensors and intermittent alarms that produce a “startle” effect on trespassers. When these go off, criminals typically decide that breaking into the home they’re attached to is more trouble than it’s worth, says Dak Kopec, an architectural psychologist and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Alarms that trigger too easily (or lights that are almost always on) tend to become a regular part of a household’s environment, and people — family members or otherwise — don’t pay as much attention to them.

“[Criminals] are looking to see how easy it’s going to be to do whatever mayhem they want to do,” Kopec says. Don’t give them the opportunity.