Plat

Beta. Plat is new. The numbers behind it are sourced, but the tool itself is still being tested on real properties, so if a map layer won't load, a canopy looks wrong or the Wagon miscounts, use Report a bug in the top bar. Reports go straight to the nursery with a copy of your plat attached, so we can see what you saw.

Spacing styles. Parkland draws every plant at its full free-standing size with room to walk and mow between; nothing touches, pruning is optional, airflow and light are best. Orchard is the classic nursery spacing: canopies are held to about 80% of free-standing size by normal annual pruning and just meet when the trees are grown (this is what Penn State, Cummins and NC State spacing tables assume). Hedgerow is close planting kept small by summer pruning, the Backyard Orchard Culture idea: about half the free-standing spread, more varieties in less room, and you're committing to pruning twice a year, every year. Trees left alone at Hedgerow spacing will crowd each other out.

Canopy sizes. Free-standing mature spread by rootstock comes from the research file behind this page (Cummins natural-spread figures for Bud 118 and G.890, apples.extension.org's 30 ft standard crown, Colorado State's pruned spread table, the Stark height≈width rule with a pear exception, plus nursery height ranges). Almost nobody publishes canopy spread per rootstock, so most values are modeled from height and marked that way. Sizes are shown as ranges because seedling rootstocks are genetically variable and vigor differs with the variety on top.

Growth over time. Canopy at year N is the mature canopy scaled by (N ÷ years-to-full-size)^0.6, capped at 1. That's a convention, not a citation; the years-to-first-crop and years-to-full-crop numbers are the sourced parts.

The Haul. Per-plant yields at maturity come from Penn State's home-orchard tables (apple by rootstock class, pear, stone fruit), Oregon State (brambles, currants, aronia, elderberry), Utah State (grape, goji, haskap), Manitoba (sea buckthorn), Montana State (haskap by year, saskatoon), UMN (blueberry) and Virginia Tech (strawberry). Yield in a given year uses the published years-to-first-crop and years-to-full-crop, with a curve shape fitted to the OSU apple and hazelnut budgets. Where a number is unpublished the plant simply doesn't count toward the haul, rather than guessing. Nothing here is a per-acre commercial figure.

Partners. A pollenizer is the plant that supplies pollen; the bee is the pollinator. Partners are checked by pollen pool (European plums and hybrid plums never pollenize each other; crabapples pollenize apples; Asian and European pears cross), by bloom window from Montana Fruit Trees' own bloom tags, by ploidy (triploids and pollen-sterile pears don't count as pollenizers), by sweet-cherry S-genotype where tagged, and by distance: within 50 ft is good, 50–100 ft is marginal, past 100 ft doesn't count (WSU and Missouri extension).

True Zone. Montana Fruit Trees rates hardiness from what actually survives at its Missoula and Florence sites and its grower network, not from the USDA map alone. Your True Zone starts from the USDA 2023 zone and drops if you've seen colder nights than the map says, or if your ground is a frost pocket. Plant ratings are the nursery's own tags.

Hazards. Black and English walnut get a juglone exclusion ring (50 ft, advisory band to 80 ft; Wisconsin and Morton Arboretum), sensitive plants inside it are flagged. Rocky Mountain juniper near apples, serviceberry or hawthorn flags cedar-apple rust (NDSU). Poplars, cottonwood, aspen and willow get a root buffer equal to their mature height (NDSU, Clemson). Blueberry and huckleberry flag the pH 4.0–5.5 requirement. Currants and gooseberries flag white pine blister rust rules in the states that have them. Horseradish, comfrey and sunchokes are marked as contain-me plants.

Prototype built 2026-09-17 on the live montanafruittrees.com catalog (371 plants). Research files: rootstocks, small fruit and perennials, yield / bloom / pollenizers, map stack, naming.