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Bountiful Garden By Susan Garry Companion planting and guilds Several years ago I went to Santa Fe for a meeting that was being held at a private conference center called Sol y Sombra (Sun and Shadow). The meeting had nothing to do with gardening but the place was all about gardens. The old buildings at Sol y Sombra were built in the 1930s in the middle of a 20-acre piece of desert. Georgia O'Keeffe spent the last three years of her life there. In the 1990s, Beth and Charles Miller of Houston bought the property and began a great adventure in land restoration. Using the methods of permaculture, installing a wide diversity of plants. Hundreds of thousands of young trees, shrubs and perennials were planted. Native grasses and shrubs were encouraged and small ponds were built to encourage even more forms of life and capture some of the small amount of water naturally occurring there. The place became a model for sustainability and land regeneration. It was at Sol y Sombra that I first heard about plant guilds. Plant guilds are groups of diverse plants that sustain and encourage each other's growth. Each plant in the guild contributes to the health of the group. For example, planting a legume - beans or peas or Texas bluebonnets - adds nitrogen to the soil. These plants have the ability to capture nitrogen from the air and fix it in the soil. That means a little less nitrogen fertilizer is needed for the other plants. That is one of the reasons why beans and corn are so often planted together. The beans add nitrogen to the soil for the greedy feeders that become tasty corn on the cob and the corn provides a sturdy pole for the beans to climb toward the sun. So a guild can be as small as two plants working together or as complex as a forest with towering trees, small seedlings, lichen, groundcover, grasses, and every other kind of plant life that grows there. And animals are part of the system as well. Insects pollinate and eat pests so plants that attract these insects are needed in the guild. Birds, lizards, frogs and other garden visitors and residents all contribute to the sustainability and health of the guild. We sometimes think that putting plants together causes competition for nutrients, sunlight and water, but if you choose the plants carefully, just the reverse is true. You would of course never plant sunflowers in a pine forest but you would plant understory trees like dogwood that like the shade of the big trees and you would plant a ground cover that loves deep shade and holds the soil in place. You'd encourage critters to come into your forest and leave their fertilizer and stir up the leaf mold and eat a few pests. The key is finding the plants that have a good supportive relationship, not competitors. For example, in your rose garden, you know that your rose wants at least six hours of sun every day, so you will not plant it under a big shade tree. You also know that you can plant other sun-loving plants nearby that will encourage pest control. Plants that like a little shade, like mint and oregano, can grow right underneath the roses and will attract beneficial insects, smell and taste good on their own, and serve as a living mulch to cut down on water loss, fungal disease, and keep the soil at an even temperature. Allium (onions, garlic, chives, leeks, society garlic) can grow right through your rose bush. These plants don't require any care and don't need much fertility while offering great pest deterrent capability. When you are planning your garden, you have many choices. Although roses are among the most favored plants in everyone's garden, a “rose-only” garden can be very boring. Even public gardens that once had simply row after row of hybrid tea bushes with their spindly legs and sparse foliage have learned that interplanting makes for a more beautiful and healthier display of roses. When you plant antique varieties that are lovely bushes as well as lovely flowers, you have the centerpiece for a wonderful diverse garden. Adding chives as a border or society garlic growing right through the middle of the bush plus a comfrey plant off to the side that will provide wonderful fat leaves filled with potassium that can be cut and piled on the ground as mulch is a good beginning. (Comfrey also has nitrogen that will help them decompose quickly and add nitrogen to the soil as well.) Then you'll want to decide on a ground cover - mint for juleps or oregano for pizza? Catnip or catmint are another good choice with their soothing blue flowers and sweet smell. Thyme is very low-growing and if you have excellent drainage, it makes a great rose companion groundcover. Parsley is a good border plant and its flowers are attractive to beneficials. Rosemary and artemisia are good companion shrubs that will add texture, color and scent to your garden and they both love the sun and won't hog up all the water. Many herbs such as tansy, coriander, fennel, and flowers such as alyssum, nasturtium, petunias and geraniums are also good rose companions. Most pests find their target by scent. With all these wonderfully confusing smells coming from the garden, many pests will just move on in frustration. For some reason, the abundance of smells runs away the bad bugs but brings the good bugs in even closer. Plants that attract and feed beneficial insects such as parasitic wasps and hoverflies include coriander (cilantro), dill, parsley and others with seasonal flowers. If there is one all-purpose rule of gardening it is that diversity breeds success. Plants do well in the presence of other kinds of plants and other forms of life. Different types of roses in a rose garden add interest because they have different shapes and sizes and forms of blossoms. Also, maybe China roses are more susceptible to one problem than Tea roses and perhaps Hybrid musks can take a little more shade than Noisettes. By choosing your roses from different classes, you increase the chances that they will be healthy. Adding other plants to the mix just adds further strength to all the plants. Mix it up. Plant herbs and flowers and roses and shrubs all together and you'll have a beautiful, fragrant and sustainable garden. And while you're at it, don't forget the diversity that needs to be going on underground as well. For any plant to thrive, it needs living and lively soil. That means lots of earthworms, microbes busy digesting organic matter so it is available to the plants, beneficial nematodes eating pest larvae. You can encourage this underground diversity by constantly building your soil with organic fertilizers, mulch and compost. You can spray on beneficial nematodes, buy and introduce ladybugs, lacewings praying mantis and other beneficials. More and more biological controls are coming on the market and they are all examples of how nature designs creatures from microscopic to towering to work together for a good system. Creating plant guilds is fun and rewarding, but it does take a little patience. The guild won't mature overnight, but the longer it is there, the better it becomes. That is what sustainability is all about - finding ways to help the earth and its creatures to sustain themselves with minimum interference. Every year the guild grows, the plants become stronger and less attractive to pests and susceptible to disease.
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