Functional plants have various ecological service functions in the agricultural landscape, such as providing pollen, habitat for predators and repelling pest insects. Planting functional plants has recently became a more common method of pest control and has already been scientifically proven. Since most published studies have focused on specific functional plants there is relative a lack of information on how to choose and allocate functional plants in orchards. This paper addresses this lack of information by integrating the results of a 3 year investigation on the use of functional plants in orchards in Jiaodong half island with those from published studies. Principles for the selection and deployment of functional plants, which have already been used to control apple orchard pests in Yantai, are provided and future prospects for using functional plants for pest control are discussed.