The Big Idea
Related Notes:
Wild Edible Garden Design Pattern
A Tea Garden
Plants Around Church
A plant guild is an assemblage of plants that, through their complementary ecological functions, mutually support a central species—most often a fruit or nut tree—while collectively improving soil fertility, suppressing weeds, attracting beneficial fauna, and maximizing vertical and horizontal space. The guild concept is derived from ecological succession theory and guild ecology 1 and was formalized for applied agroforestry by Mollison (1988).2 Each plant in a guild occupies a distinct ecological niche defined by its physical layer (vertical stratification) see: Food Forest and functional role (nutrient dynamics, pest ecology, yield). The ten canonical roles are detailed below.
Guild Roles
Guilds are plantings designed to provide multiple harvests and reduce work by conscripting plants to do the work for us.
Guild Roles, and example plants:
1. Nitrogen Fixer
The fertility engine of the guild. Nitrogen-fixing plants form a symbiosis with Rhizobium bacteria in their root nodules, converting atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium that the central tree and all other guild members can absorb. Without a nitrogen fixer, you need to buy and apply fertilizer every year.
Best choices: White clover (perennial ground cover, zones 3-10), crimson clover (annual, zones 6-10), lupine (perennial, zones 4-8), bush beans (annual, all zones), vetch (annual, zones 3-9).
Note
Nitrogen fixers need to be cut down or trimmed in order to release nitrogen into the soil they usually just keep it for themselves otherwise.
2. Dynamic Accumulator
Plants with deep taproots that mine minerals — potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium — from subsoil layers that shallow-rooted plants cannot reach. When you cut the leaves and drop them around the base of the tree (the “chop and drop” technique), those minerals become available in the topsoil as the leaves decompose.
Best choices: Comfrey (the gold standard — cut 3-4 times per season, zones 3-9), yarrow (zones 3-9), borage (annual, self-seeds, all zones), chicory (zones 3-10), dandelion (zones 3-10).
3. Pest Repellent
Aromatic plants whose volatile compounds deter harmful insects and browsing animals from the central tree. Placed in a ring at or near the drip line of the tree to create an aromatic barrier.
Best choices: Chives (deter aphids, apple scab; zones 3-10), garlic (deters aphids, Japanese beetles, spider mites; zones 3-8), daffodil bulbs (deter voles, deer; zones 3-8), marigolds (deter nematodes; annual, all zones), tansy (deters ants, moths; zones 3-8).
4. Pollinator Attractor
Flowering plants that bring bees, butterflies, hoverflies, and other pollinators to the guild. Fruit trees need pollination to set fruit. A guild without pollinators is a guild that underproduces.
Best choices: Borage (bees love it, self-seeds aggressively; annual, all zones), calendula (attracts hoverflies and bees; annual, all zones), bee balm (attracts hummingbirds and bees; zones 4-9), lavender (zones 5-9), sunflower (annual, all zones).
5. Ground Cover
Low-growing plants that suppress grass and weeds competing with the tree for water and nutrients. Ground cover also retains soil moisture, moderates soil temperature, and provides habitat for beneficial ground-dwelling predators (beetles, spiders).
Best choices: Strawberry (edible ground cover, zones 3-10), creeping thyme (drought-tolerant, zones 4-9), white clover (doubles as nitrogen fixer, zones 3-10), sweet woodruff (shade-tolerant, zones 4-8), oregano (zones 5-10).
6. Mulch Producer
Plants that generate large quantities of organic matter that can be cut and dropped to build soil around the tree. Mulch feeds soil biology, retains moisture, and moderates root zone temperature.
Best choices: Comfrey (doubles as dynamic accumulator — the single most useful guild plant), rhubarb (large leaves, zones 3-8), artichoke (zones 7-10), cardoon (zones 7-10). Source:
Source site: plantanywhere
The Idea of a Guild Matrix
https://transformativeadventures.org/2021/03/30/on-guild-matrixes-and-allstar-plants/
Central California Nitrogen Fixers
Nitrogen fixing roots. https://www.laspilitas.com/advanced/nitrogen-fixing-roots.html
Rough Ideas for Back Yard Plant Guilds
A starting guild matrix that I would like to try:
- Clover as a ground cover and nitrogen fixer
- Tomcat Clover - Trifolium willdenovii
- California Poppies as dynamic accumulators
- Lavender, Rosemary, Sage - All as pest deterrents and pollinator attractors
- Roman chamomile for attracting good bugs and pest deterrence
- Creeping thyme - needs full sun
- Onions garlic and chives
- Marjoram and oregano
Other definitions and Plant Guild Resources
For me, ”guilds” have been the most powerful and transformative concept in all of Permaculture. Guilds are plantings designed to have the stability and function of natural ecosystems, which makes them very low-maintenance and productive over long periods of time.
I probably would not still be gardening if it were not for guilds. When we create an annual garden, we must prep the land, plant the plants, tend them through their vulnerable years, and harvest them at the end of the season. Then we have to do it all over again. It’s a huge amount of labor.
Guilds turn us into wild-tenders, who gently interact and co-evolve with an ecosystem. We can “catch and store” our energy into many years of returns. While that annual garden gets you one year of yields, a good guild may get you big yields in year 1, and every year thereafter, with almost no maintenance work. I have had large guilds that required less than 1 hour of yearly maintenance for 10 years or more. Once a guild is right, you can move on to the next area of the yard, and the next, creating long-lasting low-maintenance plantings. In this way, we can transform the world. (You can read more about my gardens by visiting my profile.)
And so, I garden almost exclusively in guilds.
A good modern 101 course on guilds will start with the ”First Rule of Guilds.” (See picture) In the image this applies to ”grass,” but really it is about whatever “resident vegetation” you have. If you have creeping Charlie, or sour grass, then the first rule of guilds applies to those.
After that, there are 2 big factors that give a guild the kind of stability we’re going for. The first is the “guild matrix“ I did a recent post on. It’s a more advanced concept but well worth understanding and figuring out.
This was developed from reading on modern applied ecology and visiting a lot of established mature permaculture sites. Virtually every old site with long-evolving guilds has created a few guild matrixes, and gardens dominated by a good guild matrix are almost always the gardeners’ favorite part of their gardens. A good guild matrix is also the best demonstration of Permaculture I have ever encountered, since it will give us that truest idea of an ”ecosystem that naturally grows lots of food.” IN other words, nobody ”invented“ this, it’s just putting a word to a cool thing many great gardeners are doing out there in the real world.
The second major factor is fortress plantings. These give the guild its shape and resistance to grass and weed encroachment. Going back to the first rule of guilds, most failed guilds did so because they were overrun with grasses or weeds.
With these down, guild role theory can help us design very low labor. The idea of guild roles is to try to copy some of the things we can observe in wild plant communities. A second way of thinking about it is that we can think of all the kinds of work we would be doing in the garden, and try to recruit plants to do that work for us. That includes pollination, pest and weed prevention, and even conserving water. Keep in mind, guild roles are not a scientific concept, but a design tool. Because we can‘t really ever know all the roles a plant will fulfill in a real ecosystem! But we can use guild theory to try to increase biodiversity and cover some of the basics.
Armed with these tools, it’s possible to create gardens that can be nearly as stable as the wild edible ecosystems I documented here. For me, guilds like these have been the key to growing a complete family diet and decent income on just a few hours of maintenance labor per week.
If we can get just one guild right on our sites, then we can copy that and spread it around. In that way we can truly transform the landscape into a beautiful, abundant, ultra-low-maintenance garden.
Planting Guides