Peach, thornless blackberry, mint, strawberry and others

This is functional polyculture that turned grassy field into productive guild in zone 6 of cool temperate climate of Central Europe.



low canopy - peach

shrub layer - thornless blackberry, japanese vineberry

herbaceous, groundcover - mint, strawberries



It is beautiful, fruitfull and much apreciated by bees and other beneficial insects.

I simply made three small mulched circles (1m diameter) in a given area and in one sowed a peach seed, in another one planted mint cuttings, strawberries and the third one a rooted cutting of thornless blackberry.



Mint and strawberries spread and took over the grass with a little help of course woody mulch over grass, peach tree grew fast from seed (4 years old in this picture) and blackberry is also happy with regular mulching in its base and then it roots on the tips that touch the ground.

Peach tree need sun so i let it have it, but you can support balckberry on a pole on south side of peach tree or a bit further away where it bears heavily. Spreading blackberry plants do not fruit so much, but still do if you cut it appropriately.

If i would start again i would start bending young peach branches, thus creating smaller tree, faster and more abundant fruiting.

One of my favourite guilds which is far from done as there is one young fig tree that will replace peach tree in years to come.



If you would like more information on the guild, feel free to ask.

Designed and implemented by Aljaž Plankl

Well done Aljaz! The pictures are beautiful! Thanks for the descriptions and sharing this with us. Keep up the good work and report back with more pictures as it continues to mature.

Thank you Simon, i will keep this updated.
Above pictures are summer 2014, so we had a lot of new growth until autmn, i made this tunnel out of blackberry, pruned and trained peach - i will shoot some pictures in spring.

Looks wonderful. I do wonder why you'll replace the peach with a fig though. Of course I can't grow fig so that's probably where the wondering comes from.

Peach trees fruits heavily and there are 4 in this forest garden.
They are also quite fast to establish - from seed with proper care they already fruit in their 3-4 year.
Fig is a different story - it needs to acclimatize first and there are only 2 at the moment.
Peaches are great in this matter - growing low, producing fast and in abundance before the bigger and long term trees are established and start to fruit.
Fig in this case is a bigger and long term tree, peach is only a fruiting pioneer.