Permaculture is a great way to plant more food in a small area and this post will show you how to plant a fruit tree guild in your backyard and start building your very own food forest!
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What Is A Fruit Tree Guild?
A guild is a community of plants which grow together and support each other by recycling nutrients back into the soil, providing shade and conserving water, attracting beneficial insects, repelling pests and diseases, building soil and preventing erosion.
A fruit tree guild are communities of plants around a centralized fruit tree. You can combine individual guilds into a larger guild for a backyard orchard.
Related Post: Backyard Orchard Food Forest
What Makes A Fruit Tree Guild?
This food forest is just beginning and is a year old and just about to have plants added beneath the canopy of the trees.
A fruit tree guild may be around a single tree or an entire orchard. A fruit tree guild starts with a central fruit or nut tree or large fruiting shrub which is underplanted with plants which can:
- fix nitrogen
- barrier to grass or wildlife
- soil building
- wildlife habitat
- mulch
- attract pollinators or predatory insects
Not all of the plants in the guild need to be edible, you can mix and match ornamentals with medicinal plants and edible or culinary plants depending on you budget and local availability. It is always a benefit to plant native plant species as you build your permaculture fruit tree guild. You can plant a mixture of perennials or annuals which will self seed the area.
Related Post: Easy Perennials To Grow In Your Backyard
Comfrey in bloom.
Here are some common plants in a fruit tree guild which are planted under and around the tree:
- Comfrey
- Chives
- Irises
- Daffodils
- Sweet potato
- Strawberry
- Currants
- Blackberry
- Raspberry
- Grapes
- Passionflower
- Rugosa rose
- Hazel/Filberts
- Lupine
- Quince
- Jerusalem artichoke
- Clover
- Buckwheat
- Garlic
- Peppermint
- Hyssop
- Dill
- Fennel
- Yarrow
- Geranium
- Ginseng
- Borage
How To Plant a Fruit Tree Guild
Start by choosing your central plant, it can be a fruit tree, a nut tree or a fruiting shrub. Dig a square hole which is bigger than the root ball of the tree.
A square hole allows more room for the tree roots to settle in and grow.
I add the following into the planting hole before the tree is place in it:
or rockdust dusted into the hole.
Use a shovel or garden fork to work the additions in with the soil in the hole. You can try adding mushroom compost
Place your tree in and spread the roots a little. Fill the hole with the soil then press the soil down around the tree to firm it in and water your new tree well.
Now your tree is in you can decide what and where you want the plants underneath to be. Most fruit tree guilds are in circles to the expected width of the mature tree but don’t let that be your only template for creating your fruit tree guild! In my permaculture chicken run I have circles, semi-circles, squares, horseshoe and what I can only describe as wibbley wobbly freestyle.
The trees in the chicken run.
Decide on what shape you want your fruit tree guild to be. Take a look at the video below to see what they look like in my yard.
Building The Guild
Now you have decided on what shape your food forest will take, it’s time to cover the ground with cardboard to cover the grass or weeds. Overlap the edges well to stop the tenacious weeds from working their way through. I will add other mulch on to including leaves like in the picture below,
You will then need to layer on compost over the cardboard and wet it all down again. If your cardboard is wet enough it will break down quicker and be so much easier to plant through.
I have a lot of chicken coop bedding so I cover the compost with that to act as a mulch if I am not going to plant anything in that area for some time or if I’m planting trees just before winter.
If you want to plant it up straight away, I recommend adding more compost over the cardboard so it is a couple of inches thick. This is to give the cardboard time to break down before your plant’s roots are trying to grow through it. You can also carefully cut the cardboard with a sharp knife and dig out the turf, grass or weeds and plant directly into the hole.
Typically plants which suppress grass go around the edges, these include chives, irises, daffodils and daylilies. These plants are usually resistant to deer, rabbits etc helping to deter them from the bounty from your tree.
Climbing plants like grapes, hops, passionflower or rambling roses need to use tall plants as a scaffold to help them grow upwards. These plants want to be closer to the tree but not right up close to the trunk, give them a couple of feet of space between the climber and the trunk.
Clover, lupine, goumi, beans and peas are all nitrogen fixers. Plant a couple in your guild to see which grow well or which you prefer. You should also plant a couple of chop and drop mulch plants which can be one or more of: borage, stinging nettles, comfrey, artichoke, rhubarb and nasturtium.
Plant some species which attract pollinators such as dill, fennel, echinacea, lupine, sunflowers, yarrow, salvia, tulsi basil, aster and bee balm.
You can plant living mulch plants like strawberry, squash and sweet potato which grow and shade the ground with their leaves helping to conserve water. The added bonus of course is that with these plants you get something delicious to harvest!
Underplanting with wildflowers also works well and looks lovely.
Still Stuck With What To Plant?
Here’s an idea of some plants to put in for a guild around a fruit tree:
I really encourage you to experiment with plants in your guild and location and feel free to change them if they don’t work. Once a guild works and establishes, you will start to have abundant harvests of flowers, fruit, vegetables and herbs to use on your homestead and share with family and friends.
What guilds have worked for you in your yard? Let me know in the comments!
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