Practically as soon as you get into permaculture, you start to learn about the concept of a “guild.” A guild is a group of plants in symbiosis, that is, they all benefit and support each other. Ideally, all of the plants in a guild should provide us with food or some benefit, such as herbs that can be used medicinally or in tea. Most of us have limited space and limited time. It is better to use plants that are the most useful to us. A permaculturist is nothing if not pragmatic. A plant that yields five functions is better than another than only does two. You get more for the same amount of time and energy. There are several possible parts to a guild. I say “possible” because not every guild is capable of having all functions. You may simply not have the space, or want something a little less complicated. Then again, you may only need four or five plants because they all do multiple things. Designing a guild takes research and insight into what you want. My categories are informal. Every permaculture book or instructor seems to have a different way they set up guild categories, but they all say pretty much the same thing. Tree or Supportive Factor A tree is almost always the starting point of a guild. Trees are important for the ecosystem, and here in Texas, you cannot have too many trees. Is it also usually the tree with the most potential for serious gain, such as in fruit, nuts, or timber, so it is the tree you most want to support. It forms the ecological and physical backbone of the whole operation. Its shade protects more delicate plants. Its trunk supports vining plants. Its roots break up heavy soil and prevent erosion. Its branches and leaves moderate the temperature. Subsequent members of the guild are all chosen in some way by how they will help your particular tree. Soil Breakers For us in Texas, and in particular those of us on Blackland, using plants that break up heavy soil may be the difference between failure or success. Heavy clay soil is so easy to compact and once compacted, terribly difficult to fix without causing more damage than before. If you have a bit of time, soil breaking plants may be the answer to fixing your soil before planting the rest of the guild (including the tree). Compacted clay doesn’t allow room for air or water so many plants suffocate and die. Just increasing pore size by making big holes helps. Then you can add compost, manure, and organic matter that fill in the holes and keep the soil from being compacted again, because everything has a bigger particle size than clay. Examples include comfrey, chicory, daikon radish, dandelion, Swiss chard Cover crops that can help break up soil by sheer root mass include crimson clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, and many of our native bunching grasses such as Big Bluestem. If you are concerned about using a grass where in the future you want to put a tree, don’t worry. Just mow the grass as low as possible, cover it with cardboard, wet it down, and mulch. Not even Johnson grass will survive. Grass Suppressing Bulbs It can be disheartening to install this beautiful guild and then have grass overrun it within a couple years no matter how much you mulch. There is a solution for this: bulbs. Not all bulbs will suppress the movement of grass across the soil, but some will. Bulbs stop grass by physically blocking roots and being competitive, which in the case of some grasses, is the only way to stop them. Alliums are among the best, being onions, garlic, chives, and leeks. Many people use garlic and onions because they are easy and cheap. You just make a perimeter of garlic or onions around your tree. Though, be careful, because some herbs and plants do not like being around garlic or onions. ![]() Pest Repellants An important part of a guild are plants designed to repel harmful insects from your trees and fruit-bearing shrubs. Some trees are more delicate than others and need more help. If a bug is particularly bad in your area, make sure you inundate your tree with repellent herbs. Many repellent plants like peppermint and chamomile do so by virtue of their scent. Coriander repels Colorado potato beetle, so that is a good thing to plant around potatoes. Garlic is a general repellent. Lavender repels moths. People often plant parsley with asparagus because parsley repels asparagus beetles. Most pest repellent plants are relatively small herbs so you can plant a lot of them in a small space. Insect Attractants While repelling bad bugs, you also want to attract and encourage the good ones. This is the main basis behind bee and butterfly gardens. Make sure that you use plants that provide food and nectar throughout the year to encourage all of your great helpers to stay. Arrange several plants in blocks to be the most effective. Predatory insects: yarrow, dill, angelica, coriander, fennel, tansy, cinquefoil, buckwheat, sweet alyssum, parsley, lemon balm. A lot of predatory insect plants feature umbellate flowers like Queen Anne’s lace. Bee: native wildflowers for your region, basil, bee balm, borage, goldenrod, a host of mints and salvias (you can’t do wrong with a Lamiaceae), mistflower, oregano, flame acanthus, hyssop, rosemary, butterfly weed, mealy blue sage, Turk’s Cap, horsemint, coral honeysuckle, prairie verbena Butterfly: blue mistflower, flame acanthus, salvia, coral honeysuckle, milkweed, passionvine, native grasses of all kinds, alfalfa, blue wild indigo, clovers, butterfly weed, vetch, fennel, lantana, Echinacea Alternatively, you can also designate a sacrifice zone on another part of your property to specifically attract bad bugs away from your more valuable plants. Organic nurseries do this a lot to cut down on infestations in their greenhouses. I worked at a nursery where they had a spot with thyme, butterfly weed, several basils, and a host of other plants. Because the plants were outside and so accessible, many of the bad bugs decided to go there, saving the nursery a lot of trouble. Soil Improvers Some plants are hyperaccumulators. They uptake harmful substances into their tissue. We then remove and destroy the plant to get rid of said harmful substance. Some people do not need to worry about lead or aluminum in their soil, but people buying old houses or land with a questionable use history may look into it. Plants have been used with great success to remove substances from the soil and in some cases they are the only effective way of doing so. Pink crown (Sarcosphaera coronaria) removes arsenic. Indian mustard removes chromium and copper, as does water hyacinth and sunflowers. Rapeseed and water hyacinth remove mercury. Water hyssop, Indian mustard, rapeseed, sunflower, duckweed, and wheat remove lead, which can be particularly important for old houses that used lead paint. Then there are plants that just plain improve soil without being so fancy. In permaculture, there is such a thing as a “dynamic accumulator” that makes nutrients bio-available to other plants, but there is no scientific evidence for this. It could very well be true, but we have no proof. Comfrey is named as the prime example. Does it actually do it? Unknown. Many plants improve soil in a myriad of ways. The most famous ones are the nitrogen-fixers I will describe later. But you could say that any sufficiently deep-rooted plant or any plants that can be effectively used as mulch are soil improvers. It is a broad and general category. Cover crops are often used to improve soil, especially in the winter when not much else is going on. This is often the best way to improve large areas of land relatively quickly. Ideally, you plant these crops a couple months before your first frost so they grow, accumulate biomass and nutrients, and then die or go dormant during the winter. In the spring, you mow it, compost it, and enjoy your improved soil that you can now plant with other things. Cover crops: buckwheat, alfalfa, clover, oats, barley, wheat, rye, winter peas, hairy vetch Be mindful. In our climate, the clover probably won’t die. But it can form a nice underplanting for other crops. Even if you do kill it with newspaper or cardboard, the clover will have done its job. ![]() Biomass and Groundcover Biomass plants are plants you grow for mulch and compost. They are the plants that ensure you have enough organic matter to feed your other plants, like your annual vegetables and fruit trees. When trying to be as self-sufficient as possible, the biomass plant allows you to produce your own compost so you don’t have to go buy it. If you have the space, biomass plants are completely worth your time. And money. Biomass plants should grow quickly and decompose quickly. You should be able to “chop and drop” multiple times a year if possible, or if not, produce a comparable amount. It also shouldn’t be a chore to mess with or try to invade your other plants. That’s rude. Plants include: amaranth, oats, buckwheat, clover, alfalfa, comfrey, our native bunching grasses, fava beans, Swiss chard, sweet potatoes (tasty!), willow, sedges and rushes if you have a pond Groundcover plants are what they sound like. They cover the ground in a short, dense blanket. Nature hates naked soil, so if you don’t cover it, nature will find a suitable weed to do so. Naked soil is also a waste of opportunity. Groundcovers reduce weeds, shade the soil, and prevent erosion. They should be planted everywhere, including among your larger shrubs and herbs. They do not replace mulch, but they act like living mulch. Plants include: clover, creeping rosemary, oregano, sage, strawberry, dewberry, thyme, Roman chamomile Nitrogen-fixers Nitrogen-fixers are a crucial part of any system because they convert unusable atmospheric nitrogen into a bio-available form that other plants can use. The plants themselves don’t do this however. The Rhizobium bacteria in a symbiotic relationship on root nodules do this. Even so, some plants are better than others. Also, if your soil has never had a nitrogen-fixer growing in it, the Rhizobium bacteria may not even be there. Even if you plant clover and peas they cannot do anything without the bacteria. I recommend inoculating your soil when you first start working with it so you can give your plants a good head start. It’s quick, easy, cheap, and there’s no good reason not too. Use them everywhere. You cannot have too many of them. They are great additions to the compost pile and also make good mulch. It is always recommended to rotate annual vegetables with legumes to replenish the soil and prevent disease. Plants include: most legumes (Fabaceae), alder, astragalus, alfalfa, beans, bird’s trefoil, black locust, carob, clover, cowpea, honeybush, indigo, jicama, lentil, licorice, mesquite, vetch Climbers Vining plants can generally do whatever a non-vining plant can do, except it does it vertically. Vines attract pollinators, provide food, shade the soil, create biomass and habitat, and take advantage of a niche unique to them. With the right support, they can grow on anything. I like to use vines to shade my house and reduce my utility bill. I build a trellis a foot off my house and grow various climbers on them, especially western walls and over western windows. The wall is shaded by the plant, but air also circulates between the vine and the wall, decreasing the temperature further. Hops can grow 40 ft in a season and provide neat little cones to make sleeping pillows with, so they can net me a possible source of income while saving me money (or if you’re into making beer). The kiwi is another rapidly growing vine. It has large leaves that work out perfectly on a pergola, not to mention the fruit. Options include cucumber, melons or gourds, grapes (general or muscadine), hops, kiwi, passion flower, pole beans or peas, coral honeysuckle Nooks Nooks are not plants, but habitat. They are structures purposely set out to act as homes for beneficial insects and small creatures like lizards and frogs that lend their aid to the stability and diversity of your ecosystem. In the case of certain wood logs, they can also be inoculated with mushrooms to add another wonderful food source to your guild. It does little good to attract all these great animals and then give them nowhere to rest and lay their scale-covered heads. Or reproduce, which is really what you are after. Insect hotels have become popular, attractive structures to grace the ecologically minded garden. They contain places for solitary bees to lay their eggs and habitat for many other things. Some of them look really cool too. But you can achieve much the same effect by leaving out a few choice logs, brush, rocks, or similar natural things. Your voluntary helpers will thank you. Comments are closed.
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Rebecca Burrow
I am a Christian permie designer trying to spread the word about Christian land stewardship through permaculture. I like goats a lot. Maaaaaaaah. Archives
September 2016
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Burrow Permaculture Consulting | Permie Blog |