Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn

You might want to check out local people for the hardiness and eventual size of these plants. I am at 8300' in CO, zone 5a and quite windy. Elderberries get ~8' tall here. Service berries get 6' or so. All this with irrigation. Other plants which should in theory grow here, don't. A lot of plants have a smaller mature size in harsher climates, like mine. You don't give the other details about your location (like wind, etc) but many of these plants may end up smaller than they would if grown in a warmer/wetter location. BTW here I have yet to see Carmine Jewel cherry get much higher than 4'.

You may be right about their growth. I'm not sure how fast they grow, but have been impressed how many berries my young shrubs have. I have been buying up the Regent variety (and loving them!). I was just at Johnny Appleseed in Casper and they have two varieties right now. They have the Regent that grows to about the 6ft like you said and they have a second variety in stock that grows to about ten feet. I can't for the life of me remember what it was (I feel like it started with an "O" and they call them "service berries" there). I'm considering going back at pay day to get some of the big ones to use for privacy as well. I googled their number in case you want to give them a call and find out what the variety is: Johnny Appleseed 2200 Hickory St, Casper, WY 82604 (307) 235-1725 I'm glad you're on the facebook forum too! Fun! Good luck!

Yeah, we already have a five foot tall fence In the area. That is as high as the HMO will let us go with a fence. There is a road and bike path that are elevated about 4 feet above our yard so the fence doesn't help much with privacy, hence my desire to grow a living fence. We have a swath of land on the other side of the fence along the bike path where we can plant this hedge (quite long and about 15 feet wide). The more reading I do, the more I think elderberries or Highbush cranberries are my solution. Fast growing to 8 to 10 feet, native, zone 3 compatible, easy to grow, useable fruit, etc. I have loved reading everyone's ideas though! Thanks for your help!