Description

Nordic Plant Guilds
Permaculture companions for cold climates

Most permaculture books are written for warm places like California or Australia. This guide comes from Sweden, where summers are short, winters are long and dark, and frost can arrive in June.

A plant guild is a small community of plants that support one another around a central tree or shrub. Instead of a lonely fruit tree in the middle of a lawn, you create a living neighborhood where every plant has a job to do: fixing nitrogen, building soil, drawing in pollinators, holding moisture and keeping grass and voles away from the trunk.

Six guilds, ready to plant

• The Apple Guild: the classic guild and the perfect place to start
• The Pear Guild: focused on warmth and early pollination
• The Plum Guild: builds soil and holds moisture
• The Cherry Guild: a compact guild in full sun, built around hardy sour cherry
• The Berry Guild: for small gardens or the harshest zones, fits in just 10 to 20 square feet
• The Haskap Guild: built around one of the hardiest berry shrubs in the world, for the coldest gardens

What’s inside

• The eight roles in a plant guild, with cold climate examples and botanical names for every plant
• A step-by-step guide to building your guild, from the drip line to the bulb ring
• USDA hardiness zones for every guild, plus a comparison with Swedish growing zones
• A guide to invasive species to avoid in Scandinavia, Canada, the northern US and the UK
• Seasonal care for spring, summer, fall and winter
• 4 printable templates: my plant guild, plant list, role check, and the guild in years 1 to 3
• 17 US Letter pages

How it works
This is a digital product, so nothing will be shipped to you. After purchase, you can download the PDF straight away. Print a set of templates for every guild you create.

Perfect for you if you want your fruit trees to thrive with less work, are curious about food forests, or garden somewhere cold and are tired of advice written for warmer places.