Top 11 Fruit-Friendly Plant Partners for Your Orchard
In the world of gardening, the art of companion planting plays a crucial role in promoting a healthy and thriving fruit tree ecosystem. Here are some of the most effective plants to grow around the base of your fruit trees, each offering unique benefits.
Rhubarb, a popular perennial vegetable known for its delicious, tart flavour, serves as an excellent ground cover. Its broad leaves help shade the soil when still attached to the plant, making it a natural choice for maintaining soil moisture and preventing weed growth. Moreover, as its leaves break down, they return valuable nutrients to the soil.
Another helpful perennial herb to grow around the base of fruit trees is oregano. Known for its pungent scent, oregano repels pests and its sprawling nature makes it a perfect ground cover. Additionally, oregano's tiny pale flowers draw in a surprising number of beneficial insects, including pollinators like bumblebees and predatory insects like lacewings.
Lavender, with its soft gray-green foliage and spikes of white to deep purple flowers, is another popular choice for companion planting. Its strong fragrance repels many pests, making it a natural pest repellent. Moreover, lavender attracts beneficial insects and serves as a beauty in any space. Lavender planted near fruit trees provides additional benefits to them, as it can help improve their overall health.
Choosing an appropriate variety of lavender is important if you plan to harvest it for a specific purpose. For those interested in its many uses outside the garden, lavender has applications in cooking and crafting.
Yarrow (Achillea spp.) is another dynamic accumulator, meaning it draws up significant amounts of nutrients and can be 'chopped and dropped' to release those nutrients back into the soil to be used by fruit trees. Yarrow also has lovely soft, ferny foliage and flat-topped clusters of tiny flowers that attract pollinators that benefit fruit trees.
Lentils, an easy annual ground cover to grow, fix nitrogen and return nutrients to the soil when they die back or are cut, serving as a nutrient-dense mulch. They are a great choice for those looking for a low-maintenance ground cover around their fruit trees.
The most popular companion plants for fruit trees in Germany include bulb flowers like daffodils, perennials such as geraniums, storksbills, and herbs like lavender and rosemary. These plants can be interplanted under or near the trees to provide blooms across seasons and support tree health. They are cultivated by planting bulbs or seedlings in well-prepared soil, ensuring seasonal watering and appropriate sun/shade conditions, and maintaining them through summer with flowering annuals like dahlias or zinnias to fill gaps.
By incorporating these companion plants into your fruit tree garden, you can create a balanced and thriving ecosystem that benefits both the trees and the environment.
