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This is one example of how to do a single tree simple mini system. It is designed by Joshua Reynolds at Texas Edible Landscapes. He sells these PODS, self-sustaining micro eco-systems, that can come with lots of variables per the plants you pick. July 2019 prices – Ready made, $550; custom is $750. Food Forests and Guilds are catching on!
There is nothing new about Forest gardens/Food forests. Indigenous peoples have always had them at the edge of the village. Many visitors never knew the garden was there since they didn’t eat the same foods. We have come to understand how these ‘food forests’ work. They have been being deliberately mimiced and with practice we have found out a lot more about why and how they work, and added a few touches of our own! At their height, they have literally brought an appreciation and respect for the importance of trees, how trees beget their own companion plants, called Guilds. They are ecological zones! Trees and other perennials have taught us their extended worth, much more than money, as we experience climate changes.
If you want to grow your own, if your land already has plants growing naturally on it, sit down with them. Maybe a bit each day for a few days. Let the land talk with you. Notice the lay of the land, how it flows.
Trees are your master plant. Plant a tree thinking in the long term of a food/garden forest, guild – mainly its mature height! What about shading your area, the neighbor’s area? It will be there a long time. Think carefully what tree that will be – a food producer? Will it interfere with the soil, limiting choices of what you will plant under, around, near it. Due to tannins and oils, oak, eucalyptus, tea tree, walnut pose a challenge. Do you want it to be a windbreak so the land will be warmed for veg planting? What does your space accommodate? Do you want full grown trees? Or would your space and palate do better with an array of different kinds of dwarf trees, mixed semidwarf trees grafted with different fruits or nuts at fruit picking reachable height?
Food Forest at Alan Day Community Garden, Norway, Maine
There are all different kinds of Forest gardens/Food forests! When permaculture first got popular, the hybrid garden design was used. It was a ‘U’ shaped area cleared among the trees, the opening to the south to allow the greatest amount of sunlight and heat to be received. The edges were natural, acted as windbreaks. The central, protected and warmer portion, was planted to veggies. Since then, as the idea of Food Forests has taken hold, they have been incorporated right into urban living! They are planned from the selection of useful food producing border trees and shrubs to learning about plant companion guilds with one central tree. That happened because few urban homes had room for more, so make the best use of the space you have! Some are planted in narrow side home strips or small yards, but they are cleverly and creatively happening! Your first job is selecting your space, designing as you can.
If you have enough space, you can use the old hybrid U shape more wisely, to great advantage! Our knowledge now is much more sophisticated. In these times of needing more sustainability, little land available, Food Forests now are tending to use more efficient low maintenance perennials, that survive for decades. A mature forest may not even be recognized as a garden. The levels blend just like in nature, self mulching, use less water. Harvesting may be done along the only opening which may be a broad path corridor. But if you love your annuals, plant them along borders or in sunlit areas, or just like times past, in that protected area. You can do as you wish! If you strictly want only a perennial food forest, please see GroCycle’s super post The Complete Guide to Food Forest Layers for site selection/prep, how to tips, details on layers, much more!
See Designing your SoCal Winter Veggie Garden! Think Big! to mix it up and broaden your long term plans!
Perennials are nature’s mainstays. They are efficient, no replanting season after season waiting for fruit to form. If the perennial is eaten for their leaves you have a constant year round supply, and once at maturity, some produce fruit/veggies year round! Many are natives perfectly suited to their area – water needs, that soil. Inquire locally! They are often heat and drought tolerant. They are water saving, not requiring more start start up water like newly planted plants. See more!
December, January are a great time to install native plants and fruit trees! Nurseries stock them bare-root then! See if any of this info affects where and how you place them. Your garden can start with a single tree in your backyard. Read Toby Hemenway’s book ‘Gaia’s Garden,’ especially the chapter on Designing Garden Guilds. Toby says “…biological support replaces human intervention, shifting the garden’s burden onto the broad back of nature.” If you have time and inclination, see Linda & Larry’s Food Forest Video! Besides their suburban Santa Barbara yard being a food forest, it is the epitome of edible landscaping!
*Guild plants are plants that grow well together. It’s a LOT more than companion planting by twos, two plants that like, enhance, or help each other, though that is wonderful too. Happy plants make more food! Guilds are systems of plants starting with a tree if you have the space! If you can’t do a tree, start at the level you can – food producing shrubs are good too! Generally that tree is a fruit or nut tree that provides food. For lots of great ideas, check out Permies.com on Guilds. If you love the idea of guilds, and apples, check out the details at this Apple Tree Guild! – image at left. A large area super functioning guild utilizes both vertical space and horizontal overlapping circles!
Food forests are naturally occurring in nature. Permaculturists think of them designed in layers. From Wiki, adapted to one person’s Apple Guild example, running vertically from the top down:
- The canopy – the treetops.
- The understory or low tree layer – anything under about 4.5 meters. Our apple trees will be in this zone but in our neighborhood they’ll be some of the highest plants around so nothing will be competing with them for light.
- Shrubs – our raspberries, broad beans, and blackcurrants are in this layer. Being larger, the vicinity of the apple tree will only sustain a few of these. Broad beans are a good bet since their roots fix nitrogen from the air and get it into the soil where the tree and other plants can use it.
- Herbaceous layer – lettuces, dill, thyme, cabbage, rhubarb and so on. Anything that flowers with the apple blossom will attract insects which will help to pollinate the tree (without which, no apples).
- Rhizosphere – root crops like carrots and potatoes grow here, so need to be kept far from the shallow roots of an apple tree.
- Soil surface – home of our strawberries, sedum and clover. Clover is another soil feeding nitrogen-fixing plant.
- Vertical layer – our hops, cucumbers, sweetpeas and vines grow here. Sweetpeas fix nitrogen in their roots, which can be left in the ground after they have died back – but they climb and have thick foliage, so only suitable for larger trees.
- Some people include the underground network of some fungi as an eighth layer. In our garden the edible fungi include puffballs, though somehow we never catch them before they are football-sized.
That’s the vertical plane – there’s also a horizontal plane. An apple tree’s root spread is one-and-a-half times the diameter of its canopy and its principle feeding roots lie close to the surface, which tends to be where most of the soil’s nutrients are.
Your Forest garden/Food forest might look like William Horvath’s when it is mature. As your food forest grows, fills in, there will be no obvious layers. It will look just like nature does, blended, each plant getting sunlight per it’s height. William Horvath has ongoing experience with Food Foresting! See his detailed May 5, 2017 post and read the comments!
When you are reading online, remember to pay attention to where the guild example is. There are super wet northern guilds, snowy mountains, humid southern areas, hot and dry south western desert types, snowy northern plains and central US flatlands. All will require their own special treatment. Your best guide will be Mother Nature herself. If you are a native plant fan, the ones in your area may be the most sustainable choice of all per water needs. What did the indigenous peoples eat there?
If you are growing for income, research to find the most productive trees and crops in your area will be key. If you want self reliance, diversity is key – what grows super well together. You want crops coming in all year – fresh potent nutrition makes for healthy lives, and crops that store well if you don’t have the all year option! Some gardeners opt for a combination of in-the-ground plants interspersed with greenhouses.
I am in hopes you will talk this up to your apartment owner, install it on your own property. No matter what the size, model your veggie garden after it, share it with every gardener anywhere, of any kind that you know. This principle is so important in many ways. Guild lists can be made for every area, plant zone, specific for every tree! Guild planting makes sense.
- It’s economical. Low maintenance food forest plants grow densely, produce more for less work. We are making on prem food forests when times are hard and may get harder.
- Ecologically we are restoring native habitat when we plant and support those plants that use our water more wisely.
- It is sustainable – produces more food on less land, uses less water, cuts food miles, less fuel, packaging.
- Health is prime as we eat organic, much more nutritious food that hasn’t been depleted by shipping, storage and processing.
Our list [SEE IT!] author is Linda Buzzell-Saltzman, M.A., MFT, co-editor with Craig Chalquist of the anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, Sierra Club Books (May 2009). She is a psychotherapist and ecotherapist in Santa Barbara, where she specializes in helping clients with career issues, financial challenges and the transition to a simpler, more sustainable and nature-connected lifestyle. Linda is an heirloom rose lover, current board member of the Santa Barbara Rose Society, founder of the International Assn for Ecotherapy and co-founder of the Santa Barbara Organic Garden Club! She cares.
Linda’s List is intended for a Mediterranean climate like coastal Southern California has, one of only 5 in the world. The list in your area may be different. Check out your local gardener’s successes, check with your local nursery, permaculturists. This list is not tree specific yet. We’re working on that!
More than a list of plants, Linda’s List gives tips for good growing, eating, and usage!
SEE PART 2, the List!
Updated 3.25.23
Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.
Green Bean Connection 