It's too bad your post got neglected for so long. I think Christmas interferred with activity on some forums.

I'm in a different situation than you, so my advice will be limited. We inherited a ton of fruit trees, all on drip systems. One 1/2 acres of random plantings. I don't think anyone thought it out, but we don't plant anything under the trees. Weeds grow freely on the steep hill near the roots, and the trees still produce.

When you group things, you should consider the water and soil needs of both, and try to match them. It seems to me that both Avocados and Citrus like the same treatment because I've seen many grown grouped like you want to do.

Our Avocado is by our Macadamia and the Anna Apple. We didn't plan that. It just came that way.

Our citrus are random, and some are on the same drip as the peach, plum and apricots.

We did plant Mulberry bushes separately, and will plant wine grapes close to them. We have wine grapes in many areas of our acreage.

I plant herbs near water valves for the ease of reaching them and the assurance that inevitable leaks will make them happy.

I hope now that you have one answer, more will follow!

Suzi

I agree with the other posts. Especially about planting in groups.

I have lots of citrus, mainly as an outline to the yard. In this pic, this is a row of nectarines. While my layout is lots of straight lines, my yard is longer than wide, and faces north to south. So the row of nectarines is to hopefully provide shade as I walk back to the very back yard. I also planted for privacy, so that as the trees grew taller, I'd get privacy from the 2 story houses that they built behind me.

If I had more width to my property, I'd have planted more staggered.

Have you studied Permaculture at all? This methodology talks about the benefits of planting shrubs, herbs, flowers, etc... underneath fruit trees to benefit them, including pollination. Unfortunately I can't grow citrus trees in Central Indiana, but I planted a Stella Cherry, 4n1 Apple and a Contender Peach tree in late May. They are all growing great! This fall, I will be planting two Pear trees (one Bartlett and one Chojuro Asian Pear), a Montmorency Tart Cherry, Sunglo Nectarine, 2n1 Plum and an All-in-One Almond tree in my backyard. All trees were purchased as bare-root trees from Stark Bros Nursery in Missouri.

In the coming weeks, I am going to be tilling up a large area of my backyard so that I can underplant the fruit trees with herbs, fruiting shrubs (Bush Cherries and Red Currants) as well as lots of wildflowers. A portion of my yard will still be used as my annual vegetable garden, and I will also be planting perennial vegetables in other parts of the yard as well. I'm hoping that all of this will cut down on weed control, eliminate competition for the fruit trees and help with pollination. This is my first post on this forum but as everything is planted and ready to go, I'll be sure to post pictures.

@mfaulkner Please do update us. I am also developing a food forest.

ive read planting in groups works well, and
it seems to work fine for me.

i have a jujube, papaya, ginger, basil, Jerusalem artichoke and passionflower within 6ft of each other.
no problems.

I would not let grass grow near the foot of a fruit tree
not most of them anyway. herbs would be a much better choice. like mint or nasturiums.
sweet potato makes a good ground cover.
so do melons
you could incorporate vines like Kiwi or passionflower.

i have lots of flowering herbs to bring in beneficial insects.
catnip makes great tea also (a bit sedating too)

you could make a 5 point circle with 5 fruit trees
at like 6 or 8 ft from each other
and have a banana (or bamboo) in the middle
the banana leaves are excellent compost
and ground cover (so does bamboo)

Hi MM, I know exactly what you are experiencing. I too have an empty backyard and a list of trees which I want to plant in a pleasing manner to create outdoor rooms, I am thinking of placing evergreen citrus on the outside to create a privacy screen and keep the deciduous trees in the center so we can enjoy the sunshine in the winter. We have a 1/2 acre lot with the back yard facing south west so we have lots of sun. I have tried sketching different designs on graph paper placing trees based on their ultimate height. I used color pencils to get a better idea. I have not found any book which is really helpful in landscape designing with fruit trees. They are filled with other stuff. Just ordered one on amazon - which has 73 landscape designs by different landscapers - Ground breaking food gardens by Nikki Jabbour.Will let you know how that turns out. Please share if you found any landscape plans.

This post was edited by texasgardner on Tue, Dec 30, 14 at 23:07