Last week, we received a shipment of fruit trees that marked something of a milestone. We are managing our property as a “food forest”—rather than having separate areas with an orchard, a vegetable garden, and flower beds, we attempt to mimic the ecology and design of a forest edge, with useful plants at several layers in a productive, sometimes chaotic arrangement. Because we are limited in budget and time, installing this design is a slow process. The trees I received last week, though, represent the last of our major tree plantings—the canopy to our forest is now in place.

With all this planting done, we can begin to see what this space will look like as it matures. It takes some imagination; our trees are no larger than third-year saplings. But the structure is coming into place after three years of labor. I’m a guy very much inclined to take on long projects—you don’t go to graduate school or, for that matter, have children otherwise—but I feel a certain satisfaction in getting out of the earliest stages.

Here’s what we received: two jujube trees, beautiful twisty plants that produce a fruit like a date; a Montmorency pie cherry; a red-fleshed peach; and a European linden tree (Tilia cordata), which we’re planting for its edible leaves. These are some of my plant-geekiest purchases yet, and I am very excited about them indeed.

You can plant bare-root fruit trees with pretty little preparation—I have—and, if they are the right kind of disease-resistant trees, they will probably do fine. But, I have to admit, I was well-prepared this time around, and so I hope you’ll indulge me in a bit of a victory lap, from which you might pick up some planting ideas yourself.

I began preparing the site for these trees last fall. I laid down cardboard to kill the turf, which remained in place all winter long. I was then able to dig my planting holes right through the slightly-degraded cardboard a few days before the trees arrived. Since it’s important to get the trees in the ground as quickly as possible once they arrive, this advance preparation was very worthwhile. I was also able to watch the planting holes through a rainstorm and ensure that they drained adequately, a crucial step since most fruit trees won’t tolerate wet feet and our property has some spots that don’t let water go easily.

At planting time, each tree received the following: a handful of rock phosphate in and around the hole (our soils are phosphate-deficient and this slow-release fertilizer will help the trees fruit sooner); a mound of compost above, not in the planting hole; and a thick mulch of arborist chips. Into that pile of compost and mulch below each tree, I planted a selection of useful plants to form a guild, an ecological community around the tree.

The point of these complementary plants is not to get another crop, nor to do “companion planting” in the conventional, somewhat mystical sense people use that term. Rather, the plants I put around my trees provide specific benefits—accumulating nutrients in the soil, mulching, and attracting pollinators. To that end, each of my trees is underplanted with fava beans (to move nitrogen from the air to the soil), cardoons and mint (to suppress weeds as a living mulch), and yarrow (to attract pollinators). I also put perennial scallions at the base of each tree, mostly because I had a bunch to spread around the yard—some folks will claim their oniony smell deters pests, but I am skeptical. They do bring in lots of butterflies when they bloom, however, so for that purpose at least I’m happy to have them around the trees.
The final result won’t be a classic orchard look with trees and grass, but something more like the edge of a forest, featuring small trees, crawling ground covers, flowers, and shrubs.

Spring is advancing and the weather is warming up. I can see the changes in the woods near our home more than daily now—between my commute to work in the morning and my return home, new buds will have begun to swell visibly by the side of the road, or another dogwood will glimmer out white in the depth of the woods.

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, nine months to the day before Christmas, marking that most dramatic announcement to the Virgin Mary: “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” Nothing is complete in that moment and yet everything is to come; it is a moment of anticipation and surprise depicted with special beauty in this painting by John Collier. And so it feels appropriate, on this Annunciation day, to be thinking about my trees in this vein of hope, of longing, and of delight.

This evening I will go home through the woods of the Ozarks to sit on our bench, in the warm breeze, and look at my own budding forest in outline. With my trees so young and not yet bearing fruit, with so many of my decisions yet to come to—literally—fruition, I cannot say that I will be content; but I can say that the air will feel good, and I will enjoy the texture of the land before me and the thought of things to come.

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