Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

Designing a Guild - Part 2: Hints on Plants and Positioning

Assessing the Site

Before commencing the design of you guild it is worth having a look at your site, because this may impact what plants you can have, how many plants to can introduce and where they will be situated. Grab a compass, pen and paper, camera and a shovel, then head on out! Following are some points to think about while you do your assessment.

Access – how easy is it to get to the site of your proposed guild? The easier it is the more likely it is you will visit to check on how things are going, water, weed etc. If it is right near you back door you could plant almost anything but if it is down the paddock a way you may want to consider putting in more hardy plants that will be able to cope with benign neglect.

Shade from all sources – That is to say shade from existing plants and buildings, fences as well as the shade from the plants you are going to be using in your guild. Remember that fruiting plants require the most sun, leaf crops can get away with the least and root crops are somewhere in between.

Soil texture, pH, drainage – an understanding of what your soil is like will inform your design ideas. Once you understand your soil characteristics you can either –

  • Ensure the plants you put into your guild will get the most out of your soil, or at least be able to cope with it, or
  • Work out what you have to do to amend your soil so that it will grow the plants you want to include in your guild.

    Aspect – in other words, which way does the site face? Best of all is a northerly to north easterly aspect, this will ensure the maximum sunlight. Something other than this does not mean you should not develop the area but it can inform your plant choices.

Existing plantings – these may have a significant impact on your guild plans. Particularly if the best place for your guild is smack in the middle of your wife’s best flower bed (don’t ask). A clear area away from existing plantings will give you a clean slate to start from scratch with. Otherwise note what is already there and change your plans accordingly. Eg if you wish to put your guild in the middle of a stand of tall trees, not only will they compete with your guild for light, but also for soil nutrients as well.

Prevailing wind – Wind can be an issue by drying out the soil and the plants and also by causing physical damage to the plants as well. When assessing the site consider the need for a windbreak to protect the guild while it is establishing.

Water – you need to be able to get water to your plants easily, particularly while establishing the guild so review your options. Ensure that there is easy access to water so that the area can be irrigated when required.

Choosing the Right Plants

The list of plants that may find their way into a guild is almost endless, there is a list of plants I have compiled along with their jobs in a guild and other data available here. Below you will find some hints and things to think about when putting together a plant list for your guild.

  • Time of the year it is productive or active – for example, flowering plants are used to attract pollinators and predators but they need to be in bloom to do it. So how long will your chosen plants flower for? Set things up so that something is in bloom all year round. Developing your own blossom calendar can help you do that.
  • Annual or perennial – will your plants complete their lifecycle within a 12 month period and so require replanting every year or are they perennial? Perennials can be left to their own devices for a number of years before they require replacement and hence reduce the load on the gardener, but
  • If you are growing annuals do they freely self-seed? Self-seeding annuals may naturalise in your guild, growing each year from seed dispersed by the plant the previous year. This can be a good thing but self-seeding annuals do have a potential to become weeds if you don’t keep an eye on them.
  • Ease of establishment – This ties in with how far from your house the guild is. If the plants are hardy and establish easily they will require less intervention that if they roll over and cark it on the first hot/cold/wet/windy day.
  • Self-fertility and cross pollination – are the fruiting plants you are growing self-fertile or do they require a compatible variety for cross pollination like most apples do. If they do require a compatible variety this will need to be factored into your planning.
  • Dioecious plants – some fruiting plants, like kiwi fruit, have separate male and female plants so you need to plant the right sexes in the right ratios to make sure you get fruit.
  • Chill hours and Length of growing season – again, these are issues around fruiting plants. Some plants from cold climates such as stone fruit require a certain amount of hours below a certain temperature to produce fruit. Likewise, some tropical fruit require a long growing season to produce fruit. A bit of research on these topics will assist your planning and prevent the disappointment of nurturing a fruit tree to maturity that will never produce fruit in your area.
  • Pest or disease issues – If a plant has specific pest or disease issues in your area it is handy to know this beforehand. In the worst case you may decide not to go with a plant which has intractable pest or disease problems. Around here our issue is the Queensland Fruit Fly, not just for tree fruits but also for fruiting vegetables such as tomatoes, chillies and capsicums.

Positioning your plants

Once you have chosen your plants it is a good idea to work out (at least roughly) where in the guild you want to grow them for the best effect. There will probably be a bit of back and forth while you work things out and some plants may be discarded in favour of others or even discarded altogether if you can’t work out a place for them. While you are working where you want your plants to go, here are some points to ponder -

Consider the size of the mature plant, horizontally and vertically – This can be a difficult one because it is really easy to look at the plant in the 100mm pot and think “I can fit a stack of these in!” Allow enough space for the plants to get to full size without too much crowding, both horizontally to prevent them crowding the plants around them and vertically to take into account the amount of shade they are going cast when mature.

Potential for root competition – This is just about being aware of the type of root system that your plants have, and mixing them up, tap roots with fibrous root systems, deep rooted with shallow rooted species. This means that you don’t get too many of the same type of plants together, competing for nutrients at the one level in the soil.
Any possible incompatibilities

Potential for other incompatibilities - 80% of plant species coexist without a problem and 10 - 15% show positive interaction, like say nitrogen fixers with leaf crops, but 5% of species show antagonistic behaviour towards other species. An example of this is alliums (the onion tribe) and legumes. Legumes have a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria in nodules on their roots, but alliums exhibit antibacterial effects which can work against this relationship if they are planted too close.

Ease of accessibility – If you are planting annuals which will require replanting, leaf crops which require regular harvest or a delicate crop with requires watering and fertilising regularly, these will require easier access than hardy perennials. Make sure they are planted towards the outside of the guild or near a pathway through the guild so that they can be accessed easily, without disturbing other species in the guild.

Access to sunlight – many plants require full sunlight for at least 6 hours per day, certainly fruiting species do where you expect to harvest the fruit. Leaf crops can do with much less direct sunlight and may even prove more succulent and with a milder flavour when planted in a shadier area. Root crops require something in between. If you get your plant relationships right within the guild the tender plants get the shade they need and the fruiting plants get the sun. This is less of an issue here in Aus than the UK or US, we get plenty of sun, for some plants too much!

Exercise

If you want to have a bit of a go designing up a guild from scratch, you can download the guild design blank and plant list from here. Then grab yourself a pencil and Design a guild within the given space using up to 10 compatible plant species, filling as many “jobs” as you can. This is great thing to do if you have friends or family who are also interested in guild. Let them all have a go then discuss your various guilds and the decisions which lead to them amongst each other. It can be a really interesting way to learn.

Back to Part 1: Introduction and Plant Functions

Click Here to check out our YouTube Channel