3 Steps to Start a Fruit Tree Guild

Before looking at the 3 key steps to start a fruit tree guild, let’s look into what a fruit tree guild even is, and why you would want one in the first place.

According to Toby Hemenway’s great book Gaia’s Garden, plant guilds:

Basically, a fruit tree guild—or any plant guild—is a community (or network) of plants that produces a more abundant system together than if each plant were grown separately.

Plant guilds are more abundant because the plants all provide a number of benefits to the community, through:

• Fixing nitrogen
• Building soil
• Providing mulch
• Attracting beneficial insects and supporting other beneficial critters, and
• Controlling pests

In a fruit tree guild, the community of plants are chosen to support the fruit tree, which is normally planted in the center.

Many online guides break fruit tree guilds into 6-7 categories, based on the functions they serve, with multiple plants serving each function. The result is often a guild consisting of dozens of individual plants.

This will result in great abundance—(and it should be your ultimate goal)—but you don’t have to start there.

If you’re just learning about plants, or if you have a limited budget, it can be challenging to achieve this for even 1 fruit tree, let alone a whole food forest filled with a dozen different fruit trees!

In other words… That’s an end-point, not a starting point.

But there are 3 simple steps you can take to start a fruit tree guild. Let’s dive into them!

Before you scroll down, make sure to grab your cheat-sheet all about starting a food forest, which also includes 2 sample apple tree guilds.

When you go to start a fruit tree guild, the first step you should take is to mulch the surrounding area with wood chips, straw, fall leaves or other organic material. You could also add compost and spread seeds to grow a living mulch.

One of the most important things you can do to grow healthy fruit trees is to encourage fungi in your soil. Trees rely on fungi to protect them from pests, and to get access to nutrients and water.

A good mulch layer will create the conditions that will encourage fungi. (Having more fungi growing in your soil will help boost your entire property!)

Fungi may not be plants, but they’re a critical part of a healthy fruit tree guild. Plus, if you mulch around your trees and use sheet-mulching to eliminate grass, then you won’t have to plant plants that suppress grass.

This will save you time and energy in the long run. Unless you’re trying to create a savanna based food forest or a silvopasture, you don’t want grass growing around your trees. Keeping grass around your trees will just make more work for you in the long run, unless you manage it with animals or grow grass for regular harvesting.

Most of your trees will want to live in a plant community that is rich in fungi, without grass.

Mulching your trees will also help keep the soil nice and moist, which is critical for helping your new fruit tree get established. Mulch is fantastic at reducing the loss of water from your soil, and it could even eliminate the need for watering altogether, depending on your climate.

The next step to start a fruit tree guild is to add nitrogen fixing-plants around your fruit tree. These are plants that work with bacteria found in the soil to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and add it to the soil in a form that your plants can use.

Basically, this is a free and natural source of fertilizer for your fruit trees.

On my property, I’ve had good luck growing lupines around my trees and shrubs. But you could also grow clover and many other types of nitrogen-fixing plants. I’m planning on spreading red clover seeds around many of my trees and shrubs early this spring.

One reason I like growing lupines and clovers is that both can be chop-and-dropped. By cutting these plants back, you not only mulch the soil surface, but you also trigger a die-back in the roots, causing them to release a burst of nitrogen to the soil.

And you can do the same with woody nitrogen-fixing shrubs. This woody material will also help support fungi, which love all that woody debris.

If you start a fruit tree guild with a bunch of nitrogen-fixers your fruit trees will love you. Just don’t forget to chop-and-drop the nitrogen-fixing plants!

Through the first 2 steps to start a food forest, you’ve created a rich fungal environment that stays moist through mulching, and you’ve planted plants that will help provide nitrogen for your fruit tree.

But what about pests? This is a big problem for a lot of people growing fruit trees.

Supporting a healthy community of fungi and reducing drought stress will make your fruit trees more resistant to pests. Luckily, these goals were already accomplished through step 1.

You also want to attract beneficial insects such as micro-wasps, hover flies, and lady bugs. A diverse mix of flowers is a great way to attract these beneficial insects.

Sweet alyssum is a great example of a flower that can attract beneficial insects. It’s also edible, low growing, and beautiful. Plus, you can easily grow it from seed, making it a good low cost option.

You can also buy a mix of flower seeds. West Coast Seeds has a number of great options if you live in an area with a temperate climate.

Beyond planting flowers to attract beneficial insects, there is one more key element to controlling pests when you start a fruit tree guild. That is adding rock and log piles, and even installing snags just outside the edge of the fruit tree when it’s fully grown.

Rocks and log piles provide homes for all sorts of beneficial critters like frogs, toads, lizards, centipedes, and many others. This is a core part of rewilding your property, which will help keep your place in balance with nature.

It takes time to attract predators and other beneficial insects, and that’s why it’s so important to include these habitat features when you first start a fruit tree guild.

By attracting these predators and providing homes for them, you will see a lot less pest issues in the future as your fruit tree grows and matures.