There are as many orchard designs as there are orchardists who design them.  What is your style?

You may have inherited an entire orchard, or maybe you are putting in your very first tree.    If you have the opportunity, do some research and see examples of types of orchard design.  You will want to consider your available space, the number of trees, their placement, the orientation of the trees and the amount of sunlight that will be available.  You may want to add mulch, companion plants, irrigation, or other features.  There is so much to think about!

What defines a successful orchard?  Is it the quantity of fruit?  The diversity of varieties?  Financial success?  I have struggled with this topic for most of my orchard life.   When I set about to create our orchard, I had a vision of a self sustaining beautifully maintained space with a wonderful harvest of lovely perfect fruit. It is a lot more complicated than that, as I soon discovered.

Our orchard has gone through a lot of transitions in design and plantings. A few of those variations included random planting, straight line planting, companion plants, mulched area under the tree, the addition of wildflowers, and finally a transition to comfrey under each tree.

You may have seen photo on the right taken of the orchard from a previous year when I spent a lot of time clearing out grass with a glyphosate spray.

I got lot of comments about how beautiful the orchard looked, and several who saw it commented that they would like to create a similar space.  It was beautiful, but I’m not convinced it was the best thing for the trees, and it certainly was a huge amount of work for me.  I am currently rethinking this process.

My orchard is not as tidy these days.  I work on it constantly, but I’m not as young as I used to be.  Regardless of how it looks, my orchard is a thing of beauty to me.  I go there every day, but particularly when I need to get away.  It is a calming force, a place to come to escape the problems of the world and just focus on the trees and their inherent beauty.

It is for you to decide what the perfect orchard is, or even if there is such a thing.  I only know that on a beautiful spring day, you will find me down in the trees.  I may be covered with surround spray or flinging dirt off my shirt like Pigpen from the cartoon Charlie Brown.  One thing is for certain.  There will be a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

And that, dear friends, is surely the perfect orchard space!