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What is the Best Trellis for Climbing Plants?

March 22, 2019 by Jake Traynor Leave a Comment

A tree!

Sure, you can also make use of the fences around your food forest, but there is no better trellis than a tree.

“Why is that? Surely there’s no difference.”

Exactly. There is no difference in how good of a trellis a tree is, but that’s precisely what makes them so good.

You see, a fruit tree is the only kind of trellis which also produces food by itself, rather than just functioning well at its job.

This principle is one of the game-changing insights that Bill Mollison taught. He said, that good design is about having elements in your design serve many functions beyond what they intrinsically offer.

That means having a tree just to produce fruit is not good design, because fruit trees produce fruit anyway. However, if your tree serves the function of a trellis too, then you’ve made it multi-functional. You’ve designed the arrangement well by stacking functions together like that.

This is especially good if you’re short on space, because you’re able to achieve more with less

So, when you’re designing your food forest, have a think about how you can combine elements together. The principle of achieving multiple things at once with your actions is something you should always keep in mind when making additions to your food forest.

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