Food Forest / Orchard design - linear rows vs non-linear

I'm working on a design that will include:

apricot plum honey locust pecan chestnut hazelnut hickory cherry nectarine persimmon almond nannyberry elderberry kiwi witchhazel chokeberry juneberry seaberry black walnut
buartnut pear and apple, total of 90 trees/shrubs.  So much for going slow!

I started thinking of using Stefan Sobkowiak's NAP system using rows and now I'm learning about more non-linear design like a typical food forest.

The top priority is the lowest maintenance possible, pruning ok but no plans to spray each year, there is a chance this could become a you-pick operation.

What are the pros/cons of each approach?

My gut is telling me that having fruit or nut tree varieties NOT together (aka food forest) will make maintenance MUCH harder versus grouping things together.  Is this correct?

Has anyone learned any maintenance lessons on their own home orchard design?

Many thanks, any guidance most appreciated!!!

Go with linear rows
Pecan/Walnut/Hickory/Buartnut/Persimmon/etc @ 40ft*1.5 spacing
Legume/Adler @20ft*1.5 spacing
Chestnut/Hazelnut/Almond/etc @ 20ft*1.5 spacing
Vines/Apple-Pear and Fruits/Elderberry/etc @ 15ft * 1.5 spacing
Fruiting Shrub @10ft*1.5 spacing
Legume/Adler @20ft*1.5 spacing

Give you plant extra spacing you can always add some berries if you have too much spacing but if its too little it will be hard to dial-back.

Whats the size of this food forest 1/2 acre for a family or 40acres for a community (U-Pick)?
Whats the spacing between the rows of plants?

That is an interesting question and interesting perspective. But ... have you ever thought about what the land wants? Maybe the land doesn't care for straight lines. Maybe Nature prefers curves and waves. There are, after all, very few straight lines in nature. Maybe there are reasons for that. One thing we could all do is to think about how water flows and hills curve and sun shines and wind blows. And face the trees we plant and gardens we grow into more fitting relationships with all of Earth. Maybe we could ask the Nature Spirits and Fairies what they want or what they think is best. We don't always have to just impose our own human needs on a landscape. What we want might be most efficient for us, but maybe it is not for Nature. Maybe we could give up some of our needs for the benefit for those who will be there every moment and every day, and even possibly long after we are gone.

S Bengi wrote:Go with linear rows
Pecan/Walnut/Hickory/Buartnut/Persimmon/etc @ 40ft*1.5 spacing
Legume/Adler @20ft*1.5 spacing
Chestnut/Hazelnut/Almond/etc @ 20ft*1.5 spacing
Vines/Apple-Pear and Fruits/Elderberry/etc @ 15ft * 1.5 spacing
Fruiting Shrub @10ft*1.5 spacing
Legume/Adler @20ft*1.5 spacing

Give you plan extra spacing you can always add some berries if you have too much spacing but if its too little it will be hard to dial-back.

Whats the size of this food forest 1/2 acre for a family or 40acres for a community (U-Pick)?

Hope I did this right. Thanks for this, what do you mean by 1.5 spacing? I've read that 20ft trees should have 18 feet between trees and 25 feet between rows.  Size will be around an acre if my research is correct.

especially if going towards a u-pick type deal, but in general anyway, grouping like with like (at least within species and to keep harvest times adjacent) can be a huge boost to the efficiency of working in that kind of space.

can be useful regardless of linear vs non-.  nature makes little groves of the same sort of thing too.

Is that acre closer to  210ft*210ft or is it more like 100ft*440ft?

Do you want to have the 40ft nut trees on the north perimeter boundary? If so then the orchard could have 30ft between rows and the plants inside the rows can be 20ft apart with a mulched/wild continious strip that is 10ft wide. The rest of the orchard floor can be mowed 6inch tall nitrogen fixing dutch clover+mint/tyme+chive/etc+cilantro/etc lawn like area.

Why do I give it so much spacing? It's because without enough airflow your plants will get sick and need alot of chemicals and spray. You can also use the "mowed lawn like area" to grow veggetables too if needed or to run animals thru the system. You could even make some 10ft wide linear ponds (not too sure what you could grow in shallow 3ft ponds).