The tree interface, for creating and accessing the tree, is accessed on a table level. A full implementation of this interface would be as follows: interface Doctrine_Tree_Interface { /** * creates root node from given record or from a new record */ public function createRoot(Doctrine_Record $record = null); /** * returns root node */ public function findRoot($root_id = 1); /** * optimised method to returns iterator for traversal of the entire tree from root */ public function fetchTree($options = array()); /** * optimised method that returns iterator for traversal of the tree from the given record's primary key */ public function fetchBranch($pk, $options = array()); } // if your model acts as tree you can retrieve the associated tree object as follows $treeObj = $manager->getTable('Model')->getTree();