The Grove features over a dozen different fruit and nut cultivars with reddish fruit, nuts, or foliage in a repeating pattern.
Quite a few fruit trees flourish in our desert landscape. Visitors can learn tips for optimum production or just enjoy beautiful blossoms in spring, the joy of an orchard full of fruit in summer, or a beautiful fall display.
ABOUT FRUIT TREE GUILDS
Fruit tree guilds all start with a fruit tree and work their way out with an underplanting of different perennials that work together to promote a healthy ecosystem: edibles, medicinal plants, native flowering plants. Sort of companion planting at the food forest level:
- Plants that accumulate nitrogen in the soil as they grow (any legume, clover, peas, lentils)
- Plants that attract pollinators (many natives, plus fennel, dill, yarrow, salvia)
- Plants that repel pests (garlic, onion, marigold, oregano, chive)
- Plants that are mulchers, suppress weeds, also decrease watering needs like a ground cover (comfrey, red clover, squash, pumpkin, mint) You can even incorporate other edible plants (rhubarb, strawberries)
All of these reduce your overall work-load in the garden, make watering more efficient, suppress weeds, improve the soil, decrease erosion, (oh and your favorite) increase yields. Win-win-win.
THE BENDABLE TREE
The special feature in the middle of The Grove is a bendable tree with seating around it. The trees are trained over a frame...not that hard to do...just takes some time...with spectacular results.
Did you enjoy The Grove? Now we are off to the third garden on the Red Path...La Villita!
