(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....
. 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. 
