How to grow mulberries

For the best fruits, take care to choose a black mulberry (Morus nigra) or one of its varieties, rather than any other mulberry species. Black mulberry trees can eventually grow very large, up to 9m (30ft) tall and wide, so need a lot of space. If you don’t have that much room, there are several smaller varieties too, including compact ‘Charlotte Russe’, which will reach only 1.5m (5ft) tall if kept in a container, and will fruit in its first year.

When choosing a variety, look for those with an RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM). These are recommended by RHS fruit experts, as they performed well in trials. You’ll also find mulberries growing in several of the RHS gardens, so you can compare their sizes and see how they grow.

Mulberries like deep, moisture-retentive but well-drained soil that has been enriched with well-rotted manure or garden compost. Choose a sunny, sheltered planting spot, where the tree will have plenty of room to develop its wide shape – check the plant label to see its eventual size. Mulberry trees look great as a centrepiece in a lawn, with plenty of space around them so you can enjoy their handsome, often gnarled appearance to the full. They can also be planted against a warm sunny wall, especially in colder locations.

Both bare-root and container-grown trees are best planted while dormant, from autumn to spring, but should settle in best in spring as the soil is warming up. Insert a sturdy stake to support the young tree and ensure good root development. For full planting instructions, see our guides below.

Once established, mulberry trees need very little maintenance – they are hardy, robust, slow-growing trees that can live for hundreds of years. They often make wide, lop-sided specimens over time, but that’s all part of their charm.

Mulberries are usually grown as free-standing trees with a bare trunk topped with a wide canopy of branches. If you don’t have room for a large tree, choose a compact variety or train a tree as an espalier, flat against a sunny wall or fence. Established free-standing mulberries need very little pruning and can be left to develop a naturally wide shape, often rather crooked as they age. Any pruning is best done while the tree is dormant, ideally after leaf fall in autumn, as mulberries bleed a lot of sap if pruned after mid-winter.

The main tree forms for mulberries are:

• Bush (a tree on a short trunk) – with a young tree, prune back the main upright shoot (leader) to 70–90cm (28–32in) tall in early winter, cutting just above strong side-shoots. Allow these to develop into a framework of eight to ten branches, as for bush apples. After that, only minimal pruning is usually required, removing any dead, damaged, crossing or overcrowded branches. If you wish to keep a neat shape, also remove wayward branches and any that sprout from the trunk below the main canopy.
• Standard or half-standard trees – these are pruned in the same way as bush trees, but with a taller clear trunk of 1.2–1.5m (4–5ft) for half-standards and 1.8–2.1m (6–7ft) for standards.
• Espalier – mulberries can be trained flat against a sunny, sheltered wall, with several tiers of horizontal branches. Start with a young tree, preferably one or two years old, then prune and train as for apple espaliers. But when summer pruning, prune more lightly than apples – shorten the new side-shoots that sprout from branches to three or four leaves, to produce short fruiting spurs. Do this in late summer, just as growth is slowing down.

Mulberry trees are generally healthy and robust once settled in, but don’t expect fruit straight away – you’ll probably need to wait several years for your first crop. Birds will help themselves to the berries too, but will hopefully leave plenty, hidden among the leaves, for you to enjoy.