Illinois Everbearing mulberry trees

Illinois Everbearing mulberry trees for sale

Pot-grown

All our pot-grown trees are grown for us to our specification by the Frank P Matthews nursery.

All pot-grown trees are suitable for planting out in the garden, some are suitable for growing in containers.

• PG1Premium half-standard 12L pot-grown tree, £72.50
  Grown for us by Frank P Matthews nursery
  Large tree (3m-5m after 10 years)
  

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Need help? Ask our fruit tree experts

Call us on 01759 392007 or fill in our contact form.

Tree specification

Photos of trees as supplied | Tree sizes and forms

Pre-ordering

Pre-order now for delivery in September 2025

Delivery charges

Delivery for a single tree starts at £9.95, it is calculated based on your postcode.

Growing and Training

Illinois Everbearing is cold-hardy and easy to grow. However for best results in the UK plant in a warm sheltered spot in full sun, with plenty of space around it, and avoid pruning.

History

Illinois Everbearing originates from the USA and is a hybrid of the White mulberry and North American species - Morus alba x Morus rubra.

Similar varieties

• Carman
  An unusual mulberry, with large sweet white fruits. Carman starts fruiting at a much younger age than other mulberries.

British-grown trees

Unlike many garden centres and online retailers, the vast majority of our fruit trees are grown in the UK. Find out more.

In addition, all our trees are certified under the Plant Healthy scheme, supervised by the Plant Health Alliance. Other stakeholders include Defra and the RHS. The scheme aims to improve UK biosecurity by setting standards for all growers and retailers involved in selling plants in the UK. Find out more.

Guaranteed fruit trees

When you buy your fruit tree from Orange Pippin Fruit Trees we guarantee it for the first season in your garden while it gets established. If it doesn't grow successfully, we'll either replace it the following season or offer a refund, subject to some conditions. Find out more.

More about mulberry trees

Mulberries are sweet fruits which bruise easily and do not keep. For this reason they are rarely available in shops, and growing your own is a good option.

Mulberries are slow-growing fruit trees which eventually get quite large (although there some dwarf varieties). They are easy to grow, and usually unaffected by diseases, and self-fertile.

Mulberries come out of dormancy very late in the spring, around the end of May, when most other trees are already in full leaf.

The fruit is borne throughout the canopy of the tree, generally out of reach from the ground - the usual method of picking is by shaking the branches when the fruit is ripe in late August. However you may need to net the tree (or some of the branches) as the fruits are popular with birds.

Pruning is not usually necessary and best avoided in older trees.

Most of our mulberries are raised from cuttings, rather than seed.

All the mulberries we supply are self-fertile, or "monoecious", with male flowers which can be pollinated from other pollen on the same tree. However older mulberry trees can ocasionally become "dioecious". In other words they change sex - the flowers switch from male to female. They will still produce fruit, but only if another mulberry with male flowers is nearby. The cause for this switch is not known, but is thought to be a response to a sudden change in the local environment.

Being naturally slow-growing most Mulberries can be grown in large pots or planters for a decade or more, although trees grown this way may eventually need to be planted in open ground.

There is a long tradition of growing mulberry trees in the UK, especially in the London area. In the early 17th century King James 1st actively encouraged the planting of mulberry trees in London in an effort to start an English silk industry. There is some debate as to whether King James and his advisors knew that sikworms preferred to eat the leaves of the White Mulberry species, but either through ignorance or because they found that White Mulberries were not suited to the English climate (which was much colder then than it is now) the vast majority of mulberry trees planted at this time were the Black Mulberry species. Silk production never took off in London, but left a legacy of Black Mulberry trees throughout the capital, and since these are long-lived trees many stil survive. For more details of Mulberry trees in London, see this article on the Spitalfields blog.