Home Orchard Design

Plan where to put your fruit trees for long term success by understanding your climate, weather, soil and garden.

With good planning and design, you can have fresh deciduous fruit from late spring to early winter in a temperate climate, if your fruit trees are in the right place with the right protection.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or retrofitting an existing garden or orchard, you’ll get the most productivity from your fruit trees if they’re in the environment that suits them exactly, but deciding where to plant them can be paralysing (it feels like such a permanent decision!).

First, you need to understand your local climate, and second, you need to know what conditions different types of fruit trees prefer.

After doing this course you’ll understand how to read your environment and understand factors like frost, wind and chill factor, how to create micro climates that fruit trees prefer, and how to design the perfect home orchard that’s exactly tailored to your situation.

What’s included in this course:

• Unit 1a: Planning your home orchard (article)
• Unit 1b: Planning your home orchard (audio)
• Unit 2a: Creating micro climates (article)
• Unit 2b: Micro climate review (activity)
• Unit 3: Using guilds to grow healthy trees (article)
• Unit 4: What is allelopathy (article)
• Unit 5: Nanna technology – windbreaks (article)
• Unit 6: Observe your trees in spring (activity)
• Unit 7a: What is chill factor and do I have it (article)
• Unit 7b: Work out your chill factor and climate zone (activity)
• Unit 8a: How to foil frost (article)
• Unit 8b: How to foil frost (audio)
• Unit 9: Make a frost map of your property (activity)
• Unit 10: Nanna technology – frost (article)
• Unit 11: Fruit tree garden planner (resource)
• Unit 12: Fruit Tree Diary (resource)
• Unit 13: Global Climate Zone Maps (resource)