Discover Other Fruiting and Companion Plants

At Bentley Apple Empire, we extend our passion for unique fruit trees to premium pawpaw and pear varieties. Explore robust, disease-resistant trees that offer flavors beyond what you find in stores, perfect for your home garden or orchard.

Our unique offerings

Our blueberry collections are designed to thrive in community, pairing your favorite fruit trees and companion plants 

We cultivate pawpaw and pear trees with a focus on superior quality and exceptional flavor. Our commitment to specialized grafting and premium stock ensures you receive trees that thrive and produce remarkable fruit.

Experience the benefits of companion planting in a compact, 3-gallon footprint. Start your permaculture orchard with natural protection and pollinator appeal of purple coneflower, black-eyed Susan, nodding onion, and common blue violet.

 

Blueberry Varieties 

Two of the finest Northern Highbush varieties you can grow — and even better together. Duke brings early-season harvests with firm, sweet berries, while Bluecrop delivers legendary mid-season yields and rich flavor. Planted side by side, they cross-pollinate beautifully, producing fuller clusters and heavier harvests than either could achieve alone. A must-have pairing for any serious grower.

Duke Blueberry: The Early-Season Star

The 'Duke' variety is the perfect way to kick off your harvest. Known as the industry standard for early-season berries, it is highly reliable and puts on a heavy display of fruit very early in the summer.

​Taste: Features a mild, slightly tangy sweetness that is very refreshing—perfect for snacking fresh off the bush.

​Fruit Quality: Renowned for its exceptionally firm texture and attractive, light-blue skin. Because the berries are so firm, they have an excellent shelf life and freeze beautifully without turning mushy.

​Fruit Size: Medium to large, uniform berries.

​Plant Size: A vigorous, upright grower that typically reaches 4 to 6 feet tall. It is a heavy producer that maintains a tidy, manageable shape.

Bluecrop Blueberry: The Classic Garden Workhorse

Widely considered the most popular blueberry variety in history, 'Bluecrop' is the definition of a dependable, high-quality shrub. It ripens mid-season, making it the perfect follow-up to your 'Duke' harvest.

​Taste: Offers a classic, full-bodied blueberry flavor that strikes a perfect balance between sweet and aromatic. It is arguably the best "all-around" flavored blueberry.

​Fruit Quality: The berries are produced in large, loose clusters, which makes them incredibly easy to harvest. They are resistant to cracking and have a great "snap" when eaten.

​Fruit Size: Consistently large and plump.

​Plant Size: Features a strong, vigorous, and upright growth habit, usually reaching 4 to 6 feet tall. It is prized for its consistent, heavy yields year after year, even in varying weather conditions.

Pawpaw Varieties

Our pawpaw trees are grown from premium seeds and expertly grafted with the best flavor varieties available. Experience the rich, tropical taste that far surpasses wild-grown pawpaws.

Mango

True to its name, Mango is a standout pawpaw variety that delivers a strikingly tropical flavor profile — rich, sweet, and smooth with a creamy texture that draws obvious comparisons to its namesake fruit. It produces large, beautiful fruits with deep yellow flesh and a generous yield that makes it a rewarding addition to any orchard. Mango ripens mid-season and pairs wonderfully with Sunflower or Pennsylvania Golden for cross-pollination, ensuring the fullest crops possible.

Pennsylvania Golden

A true American heirloom and a regional favorite, Pennsylvania Golden is one of the oldest and most celebrated pawpaw selections in the country. It produces medium to large fruits with rich, golden-yellow flesh and a sweet, tropical flavor with hints of vanilla and banana. An early ripening variety, Pennsylvania Golden is a great choice for growers looking to get a jump on the pawpaw season. As with all pawpaws, planting a second variety nearby — like Sunflower — ensures excellent cross-pollination and the fullest harvests possible.

Sunflower

One of the most beloved pawpaw varieties ever developed, Sunflower is a standout choice for backyard growers and orchard enthusiasts alike. It produces large, golden-fleshed fruits with an exceptionally sweet, custard-like flavor and minimal seeds — arguably the best eating experience of any pawpaw on the market. A vigorous, productive tree that ripens mid-season, Sunflower is self-fruitful but yields even more abundantly when planted alongside a second variety for cross-pollination.

Pear Varieties 

Few fruits are as rewarding to grow as a homegrown pear, and these three varieties represent the very best you can plant. From Moonglow's early-season sweetness to Blake's Pride's exceptional disease resistance to the legendary flavor of Bartlett, there's a pear here for every grower. Plant two or more together and they'll cross-pollinate each other, rewarding you with heavier harvests and fuller fruit season after season.

Bartlett

The most iconic pear in the world — and for good reason. Bartlett is the benchmark by which all other pears are measured, producing large, golden-yellow fruits with incredibly juicy, sweet flesh and that classic pear flavor everyone recognizes. An early to mid-season variety, it comes in right alongside Moonglow to extend your harvest window and the two cross-pollinate each other beautifully, making them a natural pairing. Easy to grow, abundantly productive, and universally loved — if a customer only knows one pear by name, it's this one.

Blake's Pride

Blake's Pride is a premium mid-season pear that checks every box for the serious home grower. Developed for outstanding flavor and exceptional disease resistance — particularly against fireblight, one of the most common threats to pear trees — it produces medium to large, golden-yellow fruits with smooth, buttery flesh and a rich, sweet flavor that rivals any variety on the market. Hardy, productive, and beautiful on the tree, Blake's Pride is an excellent companion to Moonglow, with overlapping bloom times that make the two natural cross-pollinating partners and a winning combination for any orchard planting.

Moonglow

Moonglow is a beautiful early-season pear that's hard to beat for fresh eating right off the tree. It produces large, smooth-skinned fruits with soft, juicy flesh and a mild, sweet flavor with just a hint of spice. One of the earliest ripening pears available, Moonglow brings the harvest in ahead of most other varieties — a major advantage for customers eager for homegrown fruit. Its naturally upright growth habit and excellent disease resistance make it a low-maintenance, high-reward tree for any backyard orchard.

Native Companion Plant Collection — In-Pot Pollinator Garden

Everything your fruit trees need in one beautiful, ready-to-plant pot. This hand-selected collection of four native wildflowers — Black-Eyed Susan, Common Blue Violet, Nodding Onion, and Purple Coneflower — works together as a complete orchard companion, covering the full growing season with continuous blooms that draw pollinators from early spring all the way through fall. Together they deter common pests, aerate and enrich your soil, and create a thriving habitat for the bees and beneficial insects that make the difference between an average harvest and an exceptional one. Beautiful, functional, and entirely native — this is companion planting made simple.

Black-Eyed Susan

A native prairie classic and one of the hardest working plants in any pollinator garden. Black-Eyed Susan bursts into bloom in early summer and keeps going strong well into fall, filling your garden with bold golden-yellow flowers that bees, butterflies, and beneficial insects simply can't resist. For fruit tree growers, that sustained pollinator traffic is invaluable — more bees in your orchard means better fruit set, fuller harvests, and stronger yields across every tree on your property. Its deep fibrous root system also helps break up compacted soil, improves drainage, and draws nutrients up from lower soil layers, making the ground around your fruit trees richer and more hospitable season after season. Tough, drought-tolerant, and virtually maintenance-free.

Common Blue Violet

Don't overlook this quiet little native — Common Blue Violet is an ecological powerhouse. One of the earliest bloomers in the collection, it provides critical early-season nectar right when fruit trees are coming into bloom and pollinators need it most. Its dense, low-growing habit acts as a living mulch beneath fruit trees, suppressing weeds, reducing soil moisture evaporation, and protecting topsoil from erosion during heavy rains. As the foliage breaks down naturally, it returns organic matter and nitrogen back into the soil — a quiet but constant contribution to long-term orchard health.

Nodding Onion

A native wildflower that does double duty in the orchard. Its delicate drooping pink blooms attract bees and butterflies throughout summer, while its natural allium chemistry helps deter common garden pests — including aphids and borers that commonly target fruit trees — from the surrounding plants. Below ground, Nodding Onion's bulb structure loosens and aerates the soil as it grows and expands each season, improving water infiltration and root penetration for nearby fruit trees. It's a low-profile plant that quietly does big work both above and below the surface.

Purple Coneflower

One of the most beloved native wildflowers in North America — and an orchard grower's best friend. Purple Coneflower is a pollinator magnet from midsummer through frost, attracting over 150 species of bees, butterflies, and beneficial insects that keep your fruit trees productive long after their peak bloom. It also draws predatory wasps and beneficial beetles that naturally suppress the pest populations that threaten apple, pear, and peach trees. Its long taproot reaches deep into the subsoil, breaking up hardpan, improving drainage, and cycling up minerals that shallow-rooted fruit trees can't access on their own — naturally enriching the soil with every passing season. Come fall, its seed heads feed goldfinches and songbirds well into winter