Building Guild Maker - Need Permie Input!

Hey everyone!  I'm currently working on a web app to create and share guilds with each other in an interactive and informative way.  I'm very interested in learning what this community would like to see in such an app, and what kind of information would be most relevant to see in association with someone else's guild. 

Here are a few things that are in the works on my side, would love any feedback / additional comments:

What this app should be:
- A way for permies to share working guilds with each other
- A place for ideas and examples to start from
- A way to quickly and efficiently look at what your guild has function-wise and what it's missing
- A way to quickly sort through plants by function and hardiness to speed up learning curve on what is available to you
- A place to help excite new people to try permaculture and (eventually) to walk them through getting started (would like to tie back to this forum as a place of support and encouragement for those new to the process)

What this apps should not be:
- A full-featured garden design tool (yet anyways)
- Completely overwhelmed with information at a glance (we can keep in depth information in a more info section for advanced users)


Building:

- Choose from a long list of plants.  Users will be able to add new plants to the directory and edit information.  Plant information would include common name, latin name, family, type, width and height of mature plant, hardiness, light requirements, ecological uses (which ones are most important to you?), human uses, and misc info.  Will require passionate people to help fill out the database with more in depth information about plants as the site matures.

- Pick a plot size (ex. 6' square keyhole)  Only basic rectangles to start, want to focus on plant selection and not recreating your site inch for inch.
- Zoom capabilities for the plot
- Drag and Drop plants into plot
- Automatically calculates the hardiness zone for your guild based on lowest hardiness plants
- Add commentary or additional info about your guild
- Add photos of your guild in action (other members could add additional photos of their recreations)
- Gives you a list of important plant ecological uses to help with filling functions for the guild, checks them off as your plants fill the criteria


Browsing:
- Browse Guild with interactive plant circles that bring up more detailed info on each plant
- Sort by hardiness of guilds to find guilds that would work in your area (roughly)
- See overall ecological and human uses for the guild
- Registered users can rate guilds, anyone can sort by ratings
- View all of a user's guilds



Would love your feedback on this idea.  Thanks!

Wow! This sounds perfect! Great idea!
I believe finding passionate people to fill in the info won't be a problem.
I will post more if I figure something out, just wanted to give my support!

Is this to the point of a closed beta yet?  I'd be glad to help out with testing and some data entry when its ready.

I like the idea and share the dream.  However, it seems to me that such an undertaking would best be accomplished by Google or some other high powered organization.  You could consider partnering with them...but given the relatively small(growing!) level of interest in these ideas the concept does not seem feasible at this time, or necessary.

Have you seen the Edible Forest Garden Wiki? (link below)
The wiki is a solid effort put forth allowing people to share plant info, guilds, and whole garden designs (with browsing across all 3).  This is awesome and not overly complicated, but an increase in participation would make the wiki a lot better.  Integrating the other features you mentioned would be great, but the "app" becomes exponentially more complicated.  

I hope this is possible but the soil and microclimate need improving before this techno tree will fruit.

@Sabin - Its not in beta yet, I'm working on the builder at the moment and will open a beta when I have enough together to let people start creating content while I put the front-end together

@JoshTH - I agree it could be very complicated Josh.  I do really like what is happening at the Apios Institute website, I think this app would actually be complimentary to what they are doing rather than replacing it.  I've outlined alot of stuff above, but will logistically be roadmapping these things out into several releases. Even though there is not much interest yet, content like Apios and this app really help make permaculture accessible to those that know about it but haven't become converts yet.

the forest garden wiki is only midly helpful.... eric toensmeir is trying to make money off of permaculture.... you can get full access if you pay... also check out permaculture plant nursery.... don't the prices seem just a little high... just a little? i think it's risky business partnering with these people... they may have good information but as soon as they try to gouge me for money all I feel is resentment.... so anyways... I think this would be a great OPEN SOURCE idea... if you can keep it in the commons then I'm all for it and would do anything to help.

ivanmayes wrote:
@JoshTH - I agree it could be very complicated Josh.  I do really like what is happening at the Apios Institute website, I think this app would actually be complimentary to what they are doing rather than replacing it.  I've outlined alot of stuff above, but will logistically be roadmapping these things out into several releases. Even though there is not much interest yet, content like Apios and this app really help make permaculture accessible to those that know about it but haven't become converts yet.

Ideally it would make sense to integrate the wiki information somehow into your app, but I'm not sure this is practical. As a user I want do participate with as many people as possible, especially in a limited arena.  The participation rate is a core problem, but I have never seen you post on the wiki...and you would like to integrate with this forum but are a new member yourself.  Have you done guild research you would like to share? This is a long term task requiring a unified effort which is why I'm trying to convince you not to waste your time. 
Best of luck, here's to many new and successful guilds

gobeaguru wrote:
the forest garden wiki is only midly helpful.... eric toensmeir is trying to make money off of permaculture.... you can get full access if you pay... also check out permaculture plant nursery.... don't the prices seem just a little high... just a little? i think it's risky business partnering with these people... they may have good information but as soon as they try to gouge me for money all I feel is resentment.... so anyways... I think this would be a great OPEN SOURCE idea... if you can keep it in the commons then I'm all for it and would do anything to help.

I think I understand your sentiment, but I mostly disagree.  Permaculture is the best way to make money.  The wiki is helpful because of Eric Toensmeier, and he even volunteers his time and expertise there.  Here's from the About Us page "The Apios Institute is a volunteer-run organization, with all proceeds going directly to the development and upkeep of our Edible Forest Gardens Wiki. If you are a Drupal developer and would like to volunteer and support the wiki, please contact us for more information."  The unlimited membership fee is $2 a month which could buy me a 1/2 pint of organic berries...this is America...$2 is small change.  I wonder what a decent web designer charges? I don't care if the nursery prices are a little high, its supply and demand.  Risky business? plant guarantee + %10 last time I checked.  I see exchanges in goods and information where everyone wins, not gouging.  The small cost of Apios might actually keep the discussion a little more focused . But I don't think Apios has proven successful enough to expand upon because of lacking interest.  Maybe the gardens Edible Forest Gardens inspired will really explode this year and that will change.

First off, I recommend keeping this open and free, ads are certainly fine.

I think it would be useful to have some search parameters when looking at guilds already assembled.  I'd suggest a search function that lets you search by:
-Region/climate guild is in use
-allow me to put in one plant and see what others pair it with
- others

Another thing I would recommend is allow a way for people to input sources to purchase seeds/plants/cuttings for a particular plant.  I often run into the issue where someone recommends a particular type of plant, but I can't see to find it anywhere locally or online.  Remember too that people from Australia, UK, USA and others might be accessing it, sources for plants in the UK don't do much good for people in the USA.  Kind of along the same lines, somehow make it so you can't just put in the plant name, have it that it is specific.  For example not comfrey, but russian comfrey. The other varieties aren't as good IMO. 

@JoshTH--- you can mingle with capitalism all you want... but for myself.... I don't mix that with things that I think of as being pure..    gardening, wild foraging, making peace and love, religion, etc.... ..these are things but they are special to me... I don't make money off of them... that is not to say that i can't get the things I need from them in one way or another... it's possible to share information and be compensated without money and I believe that is the sphere that permaculture should be operated in.

@ ivanmayes

It's a great idea! I would love to find something like this and would contribute where I could. I would ask please, please please... include growing zones and heat zones for plants. I live in the Phoenix, AZ area and am finding precious little about heat tolerance when researching plants. I would guess that lots of people would appreciate your efforts and contribute as they were able.

Great replies guys, thanks for your comments!

@Ryan - I think both search suggestions would definitely end up as part of the browsing function, thanks for the suggestions.

@Becky - Mostly what I see in relation to plants is in terms of hardiness, but not heat tolerance.  Could you dive a bit deeper into what would specifically be the most helpful for you to look at?  Would it suffice to see other guilds constructed in/around Phoenix, or is heat tolerance a descriptor for every plant?  If so, I'm wondering how we will get reliable (or any) information to help you if it seems to be so hard to find.  Would love to do some research into an effective solution for this, thanks for your comments!

@gobe - I agree with your sentiments against capitalism.  That said, I would love to leave this as a totally free option for people to use and share the ideas of permaculture with others, but would also like to see a method that at least covers the hard costs of creating a website of this complexity (namely hosting fees, not my time working on it).  I would love to see a donation model work, but may have to resort to ads or some other means if it is required to keep the website up and running for people to use.

The American Horticultural Society came up with a heat zone map. You can find the explanation at http://www.ahs.org/publications/heat_zone_map.htm.  I found a basic map in their book Southwest Smart Garden Regional Guide.  I suspect that the map you order (and pay for) would be more detailed. It's an excellent book but has fairly limited plant information.

The fact is that although I am in USDA zone 9 (which measures the ability of a plant to withstand winter temperatures), many of the plants that are supposed to grow in this zone simply cannot handle the summer heat. The AHS Heat Zones will give that information - if it is available on the plant you are researching. If I'm trying to put together a guild and working only with USDA zone info, I am going to lose the majority of my plants to heat stress. I have a fairly good idea of what will grow here when I'm talking about the commonly grown, well known southwestern plants, but when I'm looking up plants that will serve a function in a guild and it is not a plant I'm familiar with, I have no idea if it will grow here. I can do all the research I want, but unless I can communicate with a permaculturist familiar with our climate, it will be hit or miss - and I gotta say that it can be expensive if you do too much missing. 

I'd love to see the Heat Zone information merged with Sunset's Western Garden Book and then we'd have something to really work with.

As far as paying to use the app, I am a patron of a free forum, RetouchPro, simply because I have gotten so much useful information and received so much help from them that I would have felt guilty not helping to support it. If the info is helpful enough and a good group of people buy into participating, some of them are going to be willing to chip in for the cost to run it.

gobeaguru wrote:
I think this would be a great OPEN SOURCE idea... if you can keep it in the commons then I'm all for it and would do anything to help.

JoshTH wrote:
The unlimited membership fee is $2 a month which could buy me a 1/2 pint of organic berries...this is America...$2 is small change.  I wonder what a decent web designer charges?

I agree up to a point - I have no problem with people getting paid, or charging for their services. But people like to go for the free stuff and hesitate to go through a paywall, or even a "register-wall" (is that the term?). How have you found the participation rate - have many people signed up? Are people editing?

The other thing is that "this is America" doesn't apply to everyone here. I'm not in America, and although I love the US, and a bunch of great American friends are among the contributors at Appropedia, that's only a small part of the intended audience. 

The project I work with - Appropedia, a wiki for permaculture (and more) - is "open source" in its approach. (CC-by-sa license = open content, equivalent of the GPL license for open source software. It's tough though - we work hard, but we don't earn a cent unless we do fundraising. And I'd rather work on building a permaculture knowledge bank than fundraising - I'm a water engineer, not a marketer.

I would be willing to help out if I can!

I'm a noob to permaculture, but I come from an IT/coding background.  I'd be happy to help work on something like this.  Ever since I discovered permaculture about 6 months ago, I've thought that all this rich information could do for some better information technology.

This sounds like a great idea. I'm newer to permaculture and figuring out good guilds  -more easily-  would be a huge help. Many of the permaculture favorites are more tropical than I can use.  I would love to have plants narrowed down by climate. People with greenhouses could still click/type those conditions.

It would be nice if you could narrow criteria by any of these:
native plants of that region
moisture preference - desert, semi-dry,  Mediterranean, rain forest,  wetlands
shade/sun needs
soil types- sandy, rocky, clay,  and deep topsoil or thin layer
deer/critter/bug  resistance or tolerance
edible for humans or livestock - mention if it can be toxic

A selection option that lets you see stuff for areas with similar conditions would be great.  (For example - French immigrants started wineries in the Ozarks before the Prohibition days, because the growing conditions were similar. 

I don't want to overwhelm you. Just giving ideas on options that appeal to me.  I'm not a techie, so I don't know which ones would be easy or hard to do.

Ivan
It will be great to just select a specific tree as canopy or overstory or other info and have suggestions of what to combine ( or what Not) with it.
Great !  100% for it. A big undertaking.
If one could be able to modify it by adding species or other information - that will be great.
Open source and free to use will be great too as there are many people in need of this.

@JoshTH
....but given the relatively small(growing!) level of interest in these ideas the concept does not seem feasible at this time, or necessary... I disagree with the statement - It is not everyone's opinion.
I personally have a huge interest for Plant Guilds - and I'm sure other people do too.
It is at the core of Permaculture....
Just read and search more to see how many people have asked about Plant Guilds on this forum.

What about doing a plugin to sketchup ?

it would be nice to not remake the wheel

(oh dear, i know people rarely read long texts posted, but i want to have this said, so here i go....)

Hi there!

before i start being a negative nancy again, i would like to say that i DO really appreciate the intentions and effort of wanting to help make info available for everybody on this exciting PC topic.

But there are a few limitations to the whole plant-guilding practices that make it really hard to uniformize it.

(and oh dear, here it comes; i know people rarely read long texts posted, but i want to have this said, so here i go....)

There is just no way to standardize a guild.

I remember when i was just starting to learn about permaculture (not even 4 years ago, though it seems much longer) i was longing for the info on tried guilds, and easily accesible lists of plants in guilds.

'What to put around what, what to put together?'

But a guild (and all the functions that the plants in it provide to each other) differs highly from region to region. For example:

- a guild that worked really well for me might not work at all for my neighbour, im on the edge of heavy clay, while i am working heavy clay soil he is working with peat soils. A world of difference, different processes going on below the soil...

- functionalities that were benificial to the apple trees at my site might disturb the situation on his place and vice-versa. The bigger the distance the less usefull others' experiences with their guilds are for you.

This being said, i dont mean to say that we cant learn from each other, if everybody needs to re-invent the wheel we'd be a long way from [s]home[/s] guilds.

We can of course make a list of generalities, functions that always need to be covered.

for example for the rosaceae family, to which most fruit-trees belong, we know a bunch of stuff:
- it needs polinators, for which you can make insectaries (boraginacea and laminaceae)
- it needs lots of K and other nutrients, so some dynamic accumulators would be nice, again boraginaceae are tried accumulators
- it needs lots of predator insects (we know umbellifers provie habitat for certain predator insects, and we know composites provide food for the adult insect of which its ofspring are great predatory insects)

(generally we will also try to include alliums, malvaceae and crusiferea, but NOT nightshades, and no leguminosae)

So this is the generally used model here in the netherlands for a fruit tree guild, some has been based on gaia's garden, some has been learned from long term intensive observations by pc-teachers/practitioners in the netherlands, and it is thaught when taking a pdc, but:
the methology is thaught alongside. they teach you the method of learning from nature and the theory of how natural guilds are build.

because for example, the more temperate or cool your climate is, the slower nutrients are cycling in your system. In tropical, subtropical and mediterraenian regions N-fixers are much much more important (and thus abundant) in a permaculture system and guild. Up north, where i am at, its less of an issue (though they of corse need to be included). Even in the netherlands there is a difference in their importancy, my potent clay soil really doesnt need as much n-fixing for growing what i want to grow, but a sandy, not so nutrient-rich, soil a few villages down the river might really need n-fixers for their apple trees.

--> thus contradicting the standardized guild from the 'permaculture school - netherlands' who tell you not to put in leguminosa (because of the rampant growth it will create in nutrient-rich-soils, something i'd rather not have my apple tree do, and which will motivate many people to start pruning frantically).
-------------

And so they'll give you this standardized guild in a mind map...
Then they'll immediatly tell you of the limitations of this standardized version, and tell you to start finding out yourself what a guild would look like where you are gardening, what needs to be included, and to go out in nature in your own surrounding to look up similar trees/plants for study.

In my opinion this last part is waaayyy more important then making available standardized guilds

So in my opinion, the value of a website trying to help people with guilds and make guilds more accessible would start of with this info. Explaining the concept, and the methods for developing your own guilds, and the limitations of standardized guild.

Then it could try to get you going, by presenting a few of these standardized guilds, or guilds developed by others. Just to get you going in the right direction: Being encouraged to go into the wild, study plant communities, identify functions that you plants need and provide and see how you can match them, at the same time keeping your studies of the wild in mind.

Also, I think any standardized guild, or report of a guild working from someone, is useless without as much additional info as possible: (local)climate, (local)soils, (local)pests, (local)diseases, etc...

So here we come, at my apprehension to a 'tool' that with input of your hardiness and heat zone will tell you what plants to put in your guild:

- it does not motivate people to go about using the method, it actually gives people 'the easy way out', which would be fine if it works, but i think it wont. I know many people who have 'heard about' permaculture/guilds, will use info unquestionably (and will probably get dissapointed in the concept if their guild then fails to live up to the promise of 'no-labour, no pesticides method food-production')

- info of others will unquestionably be copied without additional factors and circumstances noted or taken in account. For example, in the netherlands some have tried to develop this guild maker tool (in dutch, but you might get something out of it by using google-translate: http://plantengildes.saiwala.nl/ )
Then info from gaia's garden and the internet on walnut guilds is used.
But this is about the black walnut (juglans nigra) which we dont grow here, commonly we have juglans regia growing in this neck of the world, the latter exuding much less of the juglons substance that effects many other plants.

I have some more objections, but those are more about how this dutch tool works, and are really technicalities that could be sorted out. and have nothing to do with the concept of building such tools.

----
to round it up:
i think, in stead of a tool, a page (or forums like this ;) explaining the method of guilding and how to do it yourself, with several little schemes' or mind maps of existing and developed guilds to get you going in the right direction, for me would suffice. Connected to that could be a forums or wiki, where everybody can share their knowledge and experiments with (new) guilding, allowing for much more factors (like soil, climatical and other conditions) to mentioned.

Also i think these general -set-you-in-the-right-direction-guilds dont need a tool that looks for plants that grow in your region in a certain guild. Knowing the plant families that need to be included is enough. Part of the fun of building your own guild is not only looking for the benificialitiets to each other, but also to us.

We need to like eating them...

i think using wikipedia and scroogle to start of creating your own guild (be it from a 'set-you-on-track standard guild' or from observations in the wild or both), is just such a creat thing toincrease your learning curve:
you automatically study plant names, genusses, families and species!

Finally i think it is great that you, and others, want to invest somuch time to help others creating guilds, but if were talking permaculture, and we're talking input and outputs....

I think investing al that time studying natural plant communities in order to further develop your guilds or new guilds would be of so much more value and 'help'-efficiency (if comes to input output ratio's)

Having a site where you can share your findings and what local conditions they were developed in would be, to me, more than enough, and time much better spent....

Yes, great, this tool is missing and will be welcome.
On the other hand, if too many of these tools develop, there will be a problem we can forecast now.
And permaculture is about energy saving. Also human energy.

The best is to take time to work together and harmonize the ideas.
You can work with Andru and Paris, as they have started a really free wiki.

http://practicalplants.org

gobeaguru Hatfield wrote:eric toensmeir is trying to make money off of permaculture.... you can get full access if you pay...

1) Yes he is a professional, but I thank him for the free information on internet, and it is normal that he gets an income, not of permaculture but of his work. That's great if some people can work full time in permaculture projects.

2) You can get full access WITHOUT PAYING. And this part if his "job" is not personal, apios is an association.

gobeaguru Hatfield wrote:also check out permaculture plant nursery.... don't the prices seem just a little high...

There is a topic regretting the poor income farmers get... The real problem of agriculture is that selling products does not pay...
Food products are too cheap!!!
And we are all responsible for this situation, as we love to have more money for buying other things.

This all sounds great and fine. Just adding my 2 cents of meanderings since it's been a few months since the last post on this. There are existing tools out there where it seems someone wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.
Have looked at Google Sketchup as someone mentioned before. Have found it to be rather cumbersome for what I want (to be able to create a visual image of a property and add clickable notes to different parts of that image. I may change my opinion of Sketchup after looking through their how to videos.
From an app/software guild perspective, being able to easily plugin a sortable spreadsheet would be helpful. I already have a list of different edible plants that are candidates for my area as a canopy, understories, shrubs/hedges, vines, groundcovers, etc. I want to be able to easily connect the data visually to an image of the property (pulled in say from Google Earth or whatever) and be able to touch/click on different parts of the image to add my own notes/links/to draw out plans (put swale or hugel here, here is where the land is on contour, etc.) that detail what I plan to do for different parts of the property that I can then reference securely via PC, phone, or in the cloud somewhere would be a plus and have the option to share it with others.
Would rather have all the information locally, but if an app like Evernote were to support sortable spreadsheets (which they don't), that would be good enough for my purposes to then connect an image(s) to that data.
Then again, this looks attractive - http://www.ideaspectrum.com/rls_pro_overview.php but I would still need to manually put in edible plant information.

Guild-building certainly cries out for some kind of information-management. When I was about halfway through Jacke and Toensmeier's book, I was already sketching out the linear program to underlie some kind of app. It's not easy, though. The best LP guy I know told me to give up, once I'd explained it to him -- it's still more art than science.

Becky Pinaz wrote:
I live in the Phoenix, AZ area and am finding precious little about heat tolerance when researching plants.

but when I'm looking up plants that will serve a function in a guild and it is not a plant I'm familiar with, I have no idea if it will grow here. I can do all the research I want, but unless I can communicate with a permaculturist familiar with our climate, it will be hit or miss - and I gotta say that it can be expensive if you do too much missing. 

Yes, heat tolerance is so much missing because most folks are concerned with "will this plant stand my frost"?
Plants do die with frost.
And do die with heat
and with lack AND excess of water.
Some are day length sensitive... And so on.

Most folks are concerned with heat, but most of them do not work with Internet...

Becky, look around the world where are places with a similar climate, then, you can get seeds from these countries. So I buy what is orginaly from South Africa, California, India, Mexico, West Australia, some parts of Chile...

I agree, it is a good idea to look for and at similar climates, but I don't know how to find climates similar to my own.

I admit I am computer/internet illiterate--I am still learning the ABC's of this. I do appreciate when people put in links I can click on, and have learned a lot from many of you. Thanks for sharing your ideas and projects and research.

The guild maker idea is interesting, but I think separate threads or sites where we can share what works, or might work, in one specific region, ex: high elevation, cold desert Rocky mountains, as one, then everyone in that region can input their ideas and experiences, and would be a little less cumbersome than some of the "something for everyone" sites I have looked at. When I put in my conditions in one data base, the answer was 0--no matches. But other sites I have looked at have nice lists of plants they are growing in similar conditions.

I have been trying to put together a list of plants recommended by and available from, my state forest nursery, with info from other sources like the Edible Forest Garden, Gaia's garden, Sunset, and a little book called Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains, to come up with a group of plants that might work in my high, dry garden. I figure if I start with these native and/or adapted trees and shrubs, then add some of the perennials I have already been growing that are doing well, I will end up with a nice windbreak/shelterbelt that provides many layers of harvest for me and my chickens, and habitat for beneficial birds and insects.

dj niels wrote:I agree, it is a good idea to look for and at similar climates, but I don't know how to find climates similar to my own.

Some ideas I have used:
- What is your latitude -> look around the world in a map, including the southern hemisphere.
- Look for inland mountains there!

- Establish a record of your months of rain. when is it raining and when is it dry. Also your average rainfall/year.
(eg: my climate is subtropical but with no summer rain, thus the AIR is too dry even if I water rainforest plants)

- Then try to find out your average annual temperature, your maxis and minis.
(eg: I am close to a Californian climate, except that I am very far from having any freeze!
I am in a dry place called matorral, but with less summer heat and less winter cold...)

I guess you can find some plants that originate from the Andes, somewhere in Chile...
I have not found an exact climate like mine, because it is mediterranean AND oceanic.
But i have found close climates, and I have pointed out WHAT are the differences.

Then you can look for seeds and make tries...
Very exciting!

Thanks, Xisca, that gives me a starting point for my search.