The fruit tree system is a guild design largely based off of the apple tree guild described in Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden, though with a few additions here and there.
The guild, though designed primarily to support the fruit trees, is composed of many productive plants, providing food and medicine for home use. Additionally most of these plants have soil building qualities, attract pollinators or both. The rooting depths, leaf heights and growing patterns are variable, reducing competition among the plants, giving each one a better chance to find a comfortable spot.
The flowers of our Red Haven peach in the spring of 2010.
These beds, comprising of fewer than 200 square feet have the potential of producing well over 1,000 pounds of fresh organic fruits and herbs for us per year while providing a healthier ecosystems for insects, soil-life, birds and other small critters.
Perennial Features
- Fruit trees – Provide an abundance of fruit, the foliage provides shelter for plants that cannot handle the summer heat, and those same leaves drop in fall and provide organic mulch with no effort
- Malus domestica - McIntosh Apple (nutrition facts)
- Prunus persica - Red Haven Peach (nutrition facts)
- Prunus avium – Black Giant Sweet Cherry (nutrition facts)
- Prunus persica - Fantasia Red Nectarine (nutrition facts)
- Chives – Allium schoenoprasum - A wonderful, easy to grow edible, also creates a dense root zone that can block encroaching grass, attracts pollinators, can deter certain pests including flies, beetles and scab, not to mention they are quite beautiful (nutrition facts)
- Comfrey - Symphytum x uplandicum – Deep roots dig for nutrients and bring them up to the surface, serves as a medicinal herb, can be cut down several times throughout the year to provide on-site mulch, a wonderful addition to compost as an activator or for additional nutrients, can be turned into a liquid “tea” for fertilization, its flowers are pretty and attract a surprising number of pollinators
- Daffodils – Narcissus – Early bulbs planted for their beauty also serve to reduce grass encroachment, bring in pollinators early in the season, and deter rabbits, deer and other browsers
- Lavender – Lavandula stoechas, angustifolia ‘Hidcote Blue’ - Wonderfully scented and appropriately celebrated, also deters moths which can be a nuisance for fruit trees, attracts pollinators, used as a culinary herb and as an essential oil for innumerable products
- Red Clover – Trifolium pratense – A short lived perennial, its deep searching roots break up the soil, as a legume it harbors nitrogen fixing bacteria, attracts pollinators and the petals can be made into a powerful detoxifying tea
- Yarrow – Achillea millefolium – Another common ornamental which serves a number of important functions including as a salad green, a nutrient accumulator, which allows it to be cut down as mulch or used as a compost activator, and it is a wonderful insectary plant, bringing in pollinators and predatory insects
Annuals
- Borage – Borago officinalis – Supposedly increases and positively influences flavor in nearby fruits and vegetables, it concentrates minerals, produces copious amounts of vegetation which can be cut down for mulch, used for salad greens or cooked greens, it has beautiful blue flowers which are edible and it freely reseeds itself (nutrition facts)
- Nasturtium – Tropaeolum majus – A well known vining flower, it provides spicy greens and flowers for the salad, the seeds are also edible and can be pickled, it attracts aphids to itself and away from more difficult to grow plants, deters other types of pests, vines across the ground to provide a living mulch, it also attracts pollinators and predatory insects
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A yellow nasturtium could make for a tasty salad or left for the bees.
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