September Permie Corner

Building a Plant Guild: Designing an apple-tree community for southeastern Pennsylvania

By Lorraine Sharaf

Last month, we explored companion planting, interplanting and succession planting—strategies that bring plants together to make a garden more productive. A plant guild takes this idea further by creating an entire community around a focal plant.

In our example, the focal plant will be an apple tree. Its companions will be chosen to perform some of the work handled naturally within a forest community: protecting and enriching the soil, cycling nutrients, attracting beneficial wildlife, suppressing grass, discouraging pests, and producing food or other useful materials.

A guild isn’t an exact copy of a wild ecosystem. It’s a designed community that borrows nature’s relationships and resilience while also meeting human needs. In Gaia’s Garden, Toby Hemenway describes a guild as a mutually supportive community of plants and animals that benefits people while creating habitat.

Although we’ll build a fruit-tree guild, an apple doesn’t have to be the focal point. Guilds can also be organized around other fruit or nut trees, shrubs, perennial vegetables or groups of annual crops.

Geek Note: Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison adopted the term plant guild after reading the 1976 Science article “Plant Defense Guilds,” by ecologists Peter Atsatt and Dennis O’Dowd. They examined ways that neighboring plants can influence herbivore behavior. Mollison expanded that defensive concept into communities whose members support one another in many ways.

🧩 Build a Community, Not a Checklist

Hemenway identifies several possible members of a fruit-tree guild: a central element; grass suppressors; insect- and bird-attracting plants; mulch producers; nutrient accumulators; nitrogen fixers; pest repellents; and small habitat spaces.

Some guild designers also organize plants into vertical layers—such as canopy, shrub, herbaceous, ground-cover, root and vine—but a small guild doesn’t need to contain every possible layer.

This also doesn’t mean we need a different plant for every job. A guild can become unnecessarily complicated when these functions are treated like a shopping list. One well-chosen plant might feed pollinators, cover the soil, cycle nutrients, and create habitat.

We also need to plan for mature plants, not the small specimens in nursery pots. Mountain mint, bee balm, comfrey, and spreading ground covers can eventually occupy substantial space. Starting with fewer plants leaves room to observe and adjust—applying the ninth permaculture principle: Use Small and Slow Solutions.

I know patience can be difficult, but plants need time to establish, spread, and form relationships. A successful guild develops rather than appearing fully formed on planting day.

🍎 Begin With the Apple Tree

Most apple varieties require pollen from another compatible variety that flowers at approximately the same time. Even a self-fertile, or self-pollinating, apple tree may produce more fruit with a compatible partner nearby.

Choose a named (established) cultivar grafted onto a rootstock appropriate for the available space, and prioritize disease resistance for southeastern Pennsylvania. A reputable local nursery or Penn State Extension can help identify compatible varieties, rootstocks, and spacing.

The tree comes first. Apples need abundant sunlight, well-drained soil, and good air circulation. Grass and weeds shouldn’t be allowed to grow against a young tree because they compete strongly for water and nutrients. Maintain an open area of wood chips around the trunk, leave the root flare (base) visible and don’t pile mulch against the bark. When mulch lays against the tree, the bark gets soft and weak and will decay, possibly killing the tree. 

The finished guild will also need access to inspect and prune the tree, gather fallen fruit, carry harvest baskets, and position a ladder. We’ll leave broad openings rather than encircle the tree with an unbroken wall of plants.

Taller companions will generally be placed on the north side, where they’re less likely to shade the tree or lower sun-loving plants. Shorter flowers and ground covers will occupy the sunnier southern side.

🌼 Adapt the Recipe to Your Site

Numerous apple-guild “recipes” appear in books and online, and we’ll create our own as a starting point. But copying another guild plant-for-plant misses the larger lesson.

First, ask what each plant is supposed to accomplish. Then choose species suited to your soil, sunlight, available space, climate, personal preferences, and wildlife.

Daffodils, for example, are traditionally planted near the outer edge of an apple guild. Their clumping growth occupies space against encroaching grass, while their toxic alkaloids make them unpalatable to deer, rabbits, and many rodents. But daffodils aren’t native to North America.

For a gardener who prefers native plants, golden ragwort (Packera aurea) may perform several related functions in an appropriate site. It blooms early, supports native insects, resists deer and rabbits, and spreads into a ground-covering colony. Other conditions may call for native alliums or different low-growing plants. No single species has to duplicate every characteristic of a daffodil; several carefully selected plants can perform those functions collectively.

Before adding any plant, ask:

•  Does it perform more than one useful function?
•  Is it suited to this site and region?
•  How large or competitive will it become?
•  Will it support wildlife without compromising the apple tree?
•  Will it increase maintenance or interfere with access?
•  Do I like it?

Our finished design will include only five companion species. That simplicity is intentional. Although the perfectionists among us—and that includes me—may think we have to cover every possibility, providing what’s actually needed is enough.

🌳 Our Southeastern Pennsylvania Apple Guild

Let’s imagine a semi-dwarf apple tree growing in full sun and average, well-drained soil with a compatible pollinating variety nearby. Its guild will eventually occupy an area roughly 12 to 15 feet across, although the actual size should be adjusted to the tree’s rootstock and mature canopy.

We’ll begin with a wood-chip circle extending approximately three feet from the trunk, especially while the tree is young. This inner zone will remain free of grass and permanent plantings. Keep the root flare exposed and pull mulch several inches away from the bark.

Outside that circle, we’ll arrange the companion plants in loose groups rather than an unbroken ring.

For more suggestions, download this table: Southeastern PA Guild Plant Palette 

These are starting quantities, not a request to fill every opening immediately. Golden ragwort and Virginia strawberry will spread, while mountain mint may eventually occupy a patch two or three feet across. We’ll give them room to do so.

🧭 Leave Room for the Gardener

Viewed from above, the taller mountain mint will sit at the outer northern edge, with golden ragwort spreading in front of or beside it. Wild columbine will form small eastern and western groups, while the low strawberries and nodding onions occupy the sunnier southern edge.

We’ll leave broad gaps between these groups—especially from the south, east and west—so we can walk toward the tree and position a ladder. The guild should look more like several connected planting islands than a bull’s-eye of solid vegetation.

If the site is too dry or sunny for golden ragwort, substitute a ground cover suited to those conditions rather than repeatedly watering a plant that doesn’t belong there.

One possible southeastern Pennsylvania apple guild. Plants are grouped according to mature size and growing conditions, with open paths created for pruning, harvesting, and ladder access. The diagram is conceptual rather than precisely to scale.

If two compatible apple trees are growing nearby, their guilds don’t have to be matching circles. Think of them as one larger plant community. Low companions can be repeated where they’re useful, while one mountain-mint patch or spreading ground-cover colony may serve both trees. If space permits, a larger edible shrub such as elderberry could extend the community beyond the apples’ mature canopies—but it shouldn’t be squeezed beneath them or allowed to obstruct sunlight and access.

❓ Where Are the Nitrogen Fixer and Mulch Plants?

We haven’t automatically added either one.

Apple trees don’t necessarily need extra nitrogen, and too much can encourage excessive leafy growth. Test the soil and add fertility only when the tree or test results indicate a need. A nitrogen-fixing plant shouldn’t be included just to complete a list.

We also don’t need a large comfrey plant devoted to producing mulch. Wood chips, clean autumn leaves, and cut foliage from the guild can protect and feed the soil. Healthy hollow stems can remain standing through winter for insects, while diseased leaves and fallen or damaged apples should be removed from the guild rather than returned as mulch or placed in a home compost pile.

The system still receives mulch, cycles nutrients and creates habitat—we’ve simply avoided assigning a separate plant to every function.

🌱 Build It Slowly

Begin with the apple tree, wood chips and clearly marked access routes. Add nodding onions and wild columbine near the outer edge, where they won’t compete heavily with the young tree.

As the apple becomes established, add small starter groups of golden ragwort and Virginia strawberry. Place the mountain mint last, after you can see how much space remains at the northern edge.

Watch what happens. Let successful plants spread into suitable openings, redirect them when they approach an access route and don’t replace every plant that fails. Sometimes a plant’s failure lets you know what actually belongs on the site.

🌿 A Garden That Does More of Its Own Work

An apple guild won’t be maintenance-free. The tree will still need pruning, monitoring and harvesting, and some companions may occasionally need to be cut back or redirected.

The goal is for the community to require fewer outside inputs as it matures. Ground covers and mulch protect the soil. Flowers feed pollinators and predatory insects. Roots occupy different depths, while fallen leaves and cut foliage return organic matter to the ground. At the same time, the guild produces food for people while rebuilding habitat.

There isn’t one universally correct apple guild. Climate, soil, tree size, available space and the gardener’s needs all shape the community. If one of our suggested plants doesn’t suit your site—or you simply don’t like it—choose another plant that performs the needed work. 

Begin with the apple tree’s needs, add a small group of hardworking companions and leave room for both the plants—and your understanding of the system—to grow.

Then observe. The true measure of a guild isn’t how closely it matches a diagram, but whether it grows into a healthier, more productive, and easier-to-care-for community—for the apple tree, the wildlife it supports, and the people it feeds.