I do this all the time. As long as you're not moving them to a xeric section of your garden (for obvious reasons), they grow well alongside, and blend well, with many landscape plants. I use them where a pop of autumn foliage color is needed, such as near rhodies or other BLEs. I have mine scattered around the garden and they still pollinate each other very well and set abundant fruit.

Blueberries are pretty. You can get varieties that are chosen for their looks --- they still have fruit, but are not bred for fruit size or flavor.

I have JoanJ raspberries, which are thornless. They aren't as elegant as blueberry bushes, but thornless means you can put them with other plants. We have deer and they don't eat the blueberry bushes, neither high bush or low bush, but critters gets all the blueberries. Squirrels, Chippies, raccoons as well as birds.

Deer will love them.

I grow some blueberry bushes amongst ornamentals. So far, I have gotten away with not netting them by hanging realistic toy snakes (like the tree python by Safari Ltd) in their branches and moving them around a little every few days.

I am not sure if this will work for birds everywhere, but it does work for the birds around me. (I do make sure to grow a lot of native plants as food sources for the birds, so they aren't desperate to try their luck against toy snakes.)

Halley,

Sorry to hijack your post (LOL) but my understanding is 9a (vs. 9b) would be quite cold by Victorian standards. (or Australian standards, generally!) Are you in a known cold pocket area like the town of Coldstream? Although even there cannot be worse than 9b! In fact I wonder if to be 9a, you'd have to be in a mountain valley? Because, even if you go quite far inland, you get a town with an all time record low of only 22F, which certainly implies it is no worse than 9b.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendigo

I wouldn't assume USDA-type maps for AU are drawn correctly. Do your personal records corroborate that you are going below -3.8C in a 'typical' winter? Because you'd have to, to be 9a.

You might be aware of Stephen Ryan's excellent youtube channel. Based on comparing his Mount Macedon garden with what I've gleaned from visiting Northern California gardens, I can say with a high degree of certainty his garden would track to USDA 9b, similar to the former Sonoma Horticultural Nursery, albeit a mild example of it, especially since the all time record lows are much worse for northern California. In fact for the 1991 freeze, there's a record of 4F/-15C for a 9b location in Marin County! Sonoma Horticultural is 9b on the current USDA map, but Polo told me he'd hit 11F/-11.6C before. (probably in the 1990, freeze, too) You'd have to be very high in elevation in AU to find a town with an ATRL of 11f!

Although just across the border, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbarumba strikes me as the sort of AU town that might be correctly zoned as 9a.

Again, not asking you to say specifically where you are, only to give a general indication of your local topography, because I'm quite curious. I'd say someone in 9a is colder than 95% of the rest of the AU population, at least.

' Deer will love them. '

When I lived in the deer infested wildwoods, we had acres of blueberry plants that grew wild in certain areas.

For years we would pick several 'ice cream' buckets of blueberries for ourselves, when the bloom season was a good one.

Not that I'm doubting anyones experience with deer. Deer seem to make a preferred dining hall in many people's yards.

But we never observed a time when the blueberries were bothered by deer.

There are most likely multiple reasons for this phenomena, just saying.

Here you go MXK3, V. corymbosum at a local pick your own spot in my state. Notice in the first pic my cap at the 6' high mark. I really like the zig-zag nature of the branches in the second pic.

If this one gets too tall for you consider V. angustifolium which doesn't get this tall. My suggestion, if you want fruit, the sunnier the better.

Hello davidrt28, I did not expect to encounter someone so knowledgeable about Australia's climate; thank you for leaving a comment! I would not be at all surprised if I have listed my USDA zone incorrectly. I indeed got it from a map.

I don't want to say exactly where I live on a public post because it is a very small hamlet, but I am located in the general vicinity of Daylesford, albeit at a higher elevation. This region is dotted with extinct volcanoes, and I live on a large farm that contains one (my house is on the side of the hill near the base).

I am a transplant (originally from Atlanta) and I don't know what a typical winter looks like here, even though I have been here several years. The local climate has been all over the place since I moved here. The BOM (our weather agency) does not keep a weather station here, and I have not been able to find previous climate data — which makes me doubt the accuracy of these cold hardiness maps all the more.

We did reach -6°C this winter, but I don't know how common that is. If I am actually in zone 9b or warmer, that would be great news for the range of plants I can grow!

Here are some pictures of blueberry bushes along the edge of our woods. Lots of native dogwoods and some black cherries in this section of understory.

We cage small trees and shrubs against deer and bunny destruction until they are big enough to not be easily annihilated. We have a bitty sugar maple sapling and a small redbud that have cages right now ... Deer will eat anything and everything; don't let them dictate what you can plant, or you won't be able to plant anything.

First picture is Northland (a half-high cultivar). Second picture is a straight species northern highbush blueberry.

Halley - wow, fascinating! Absolutely crazy, bonkers question, but you weren't on the coast of Victoria, hiking a sand dune, during the supermoon of November 14th, 2016 were you? I remember encountering an American woman with a southern accent and her Aussie boyfriend! Haha, wouldn't that be a crazy coincidence ROTFL!

I do try to keep up with AU weather events (it used to be easier before another gardening forum died a few months ago, 'Phil in Sydney' posted regular updates) I know that 'inhabited, fairly normal places' - albeit not near the coast of course - dipping below -5C has happened in recent years. So your -6C seems totally believable, especially with what you describe as your location.

I'm 100% sure I drove through Daylesford, I vaguely remember the name, and I remember seeing those extinct volcanoes you talked about. Well I didn't know it at the time, but I spotted landforms that I now recognize could have been that. You might be amused to see my recently-self-bumped AU/NZ travelogue. In the interest of not hijacking mxk3's thread any more than I already have (sorry!), feel free to post there with any further observations about AU climate, since I'd bumped it recently anyhow.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4283901/oohh-heaven-is-a-place-on-earth-apologies-to-belinda-carlisle

Top 3 bee attracting plants in 2024:

• Perennial "Little Joe Pye Weed"
• Tender Salvia "Unplugged So Blue"
• Perennial "Golden Jubilee" Agastache

^^ Rouge -- what does that have to do with blueberris?

BlueberryBundtcake: Northland is my favorite cultivar of the ones I have. The flavor is terrific, they're good bearers, and seem to be more vigorous bushes than the other ones I have.

Getting slight back on topic, I was just talking to some 'plant nerds' last week - in person - and I suggested that there's still much hybridizing to do in the genus. Asia is full of interesting Vaccinium species, although many of them are no hardier than zone 7, that isn't to say they couldn't impart their genes to hardier hybrids.

Even among the North American species more complex hybrids are emerging. I excitedly bought 'Nocturne' the moment I read the description at Logee's. It's also for sale at OGW

https://onegreenworld.com/product/nocturne-blueberry-bush/

OK my review; it's a very vigorous growing plant as you'd expect for something with that much heterosis. The berries are super cool looking as they transition from red to black, skipping over blue. BUT, alas, at least in my climate, the blueberries are so so tasting. Perfectly ok, I've bought supermarket berries this "bad" plenty of times before, but they just didn't have enough sweetness or tartness or flavor to really seem great. Any of the other cultivars I have, 'Bluray', 'Patriot' and a couple I'd have to look up in my database to remember, are better.

@UpperBayGardener (zone 7) - Since you're an Aussophile, what do you think of Chandler? I find the flavor to be excellent.

I don't have a Chandler. I'll have to check it out!

Jersey is by far my largest and most productive blueberry bush ... it's also the oldest, though, by a few years. I have Jersey, Northland, Berkeley, Bluegold, and the species. Jersey, Berkeley, and Bluegold have beds in the garden, and Northland and the native species are about twenty or so feet away in a border area.

Oh, and I have a pair of Sunshine Blue southern highbush that were sort-of an accident. They have been living in pots but are likely not allowed back into the basement this coming winter. They are testing for location off the west corner of the house, where they'll be pretty much purely ornamentals, since they're unlikely to manage to keep their fruit through late frosts and freezes.