Food Forests & Plant Guilds in Permaculture Design

When we lived in a forest there were so many wild plant guilds that we didn’t need to plant a food forest garden.

Now that we live in a wide-open valley, we have the benefit of flat land but we’d like to increase biodiversity with pollinators and permaculture in our backyard. Our goal is to create a couple of permaculture food forests to integrate with our rotational chicken runs.

When you observe the forest floor you’ll see many layers & mulch covering that top layer.

You can replicate mulching garden beds and create small or large plant guilds in your own backyard while using organic gardening. Protecting your top soil helps to retain water, increase soil microorganisms, build better soil fertility and soil carbon is preserved.

Benefits of Food Forests and Plant Guilds

Even if you’re a home gardener, you can create mini plant guilds with polyculture garden beds and grow few useful plants around your fruit trees instead of just having grass. You can mulch your paths & garden beds and build your soil.

Why Should you Plant a Food Forest?

When you observe nature, the places that thrive are rich in biodiversity. These wild places have many species of plants and animals, protected top layers of soil with lots of decomposition, plant and animal life cycles and seasonal flow. When most people garden they buy soil amendments to add to their garden beds. Many people will have fruit trees with only grass below them. I’ve talked about the importance of increasing biodiversity and attracting wild pollinators.

The goal of a food forest garden is to create plant guilds that are mutually beneficial, while preserving & building soil fertility.

Elements of a Food Forest Garden

When you step into a thriving ecosystem it’s usually a forest with multiple layers. You have trees of different heights, some in full sun, some shading out other plants. You often see vines climbing up trees or trailing along the ground, flowers, ground covers and herb layers. Many plants pop up seasonally, for example in the spring nettles come up then decay for other plants later in the season. You’ll have rotten logs with fungi, some plants growing larger than others and shrubs.

In permaculture design these layers are called the 7 layers of a food forest.

1. Canopy/Tall Tree
2. Sub canopy/large shrub
3. Shrub layer
4. Herbaceous layer
5. Groundcover layer
6. Underground layer
7. Vertical/climbing layer

Some permaculture design you’ll see will actually add two more layers to create 9 layers too:

• Wetlands
• Fungal layer

from Temperate Climate Permaculture

When you create your own food forest you want to replicate these layers.

A food forest might take time to grow depending on what plants, trees or bushes you choose. Establishing a food forest is a long-term but worthwhile investment. Growing smaller plant guilds will yield sooner. You can increase biodiversity and soil fertility with these steps:

• Chop & Drop– growing plants that you chop down to become mulch and soil fertility for surrounding plants, trees and bushes. You can grow plants like comfrey for this purpose, or use weeds as mulch like burdock leaves.
• Increase Biodiversity– growing plants that attract pollinators to increase pollination of fruit trees, using companion planting to attract predators of pests for organic pest control.
• Dynamic Accumulators- are plants that pull nutrients from deeper within the soil through their roots. These plants can then be used as a fertilizer, or as part of a fertilizer mix, for other plants that may be deficient in those particular nutrients. They play an important role in many permaculture guilds.
• Understanding ‘weeds’- Weeds are commonly seen as plants you want to get rid of, but in nature weeds are plant matter that’s continuously added to the soil to increase fertility. Learn more about the ecological understanding of weeds.

Create your own plant guilds

If you don’t have the space to grow a food forest garden, you can also create smaller plant guilds. You can add layers even if you don’t have a food forest by growing vinning plants such as hops, grapes, hardy kiwi berries, squash. 

How to design your plant guilds & food forests

• Pay attention to your sun patterns so you know where to plant them. Although a veggie garden needs good sun exposure, you can create plant guilds suited to partial shade in your backyard depending on the plants.
• Write down a list of taller plants or trees that you’d like to grow. For example, say you want to grow 2 apple trees, then make a list of perennial plants that you could grow around your trees.

I enjoy doodling different plant guilds for our backyard

• It helps to learn more about plant guilds from books. There’s a fantastic free ebook from tcpermaculture to give you some inspiration.

There are some fantastic food forest books too.

I love this plant guild list from zumbido-vida, it gives you an idea of what to plant in each layer

Consider adding a swale to your food forest for catching water.

A swale will create an underground reserve to nourish your plants underground which is especially important during periods of drought.

FREE downloadable ebook from Midwest Permaculture

Have you planted a forest garden? I’d love to hear more & feel free to share in the comments 🙂