I'm no expert. But my mulberry easily puts on 10'-15' of growth per year. The biggest problem i've seen with bigger limbs is rotting from open wounds, but this thing is an old beast of a tree. Makes magnificent shade. It's a male, and only recently grafted with fruiting varieties.

kurioo, I just looked at my old photos for you. Please take a look at these photos of my Limelight below: This was the Limelight in 2006, when it was planted into the ground. So you see that even then, it was a lush and healthy shrub: This one was from July 2007, a year after it was planted to the ground. At this point, my island was not created yet: This was a closer look from 2007: Now, this was from last year, after my island was created. You see how within 2 years this thing just grew and grew! By the end of summer 2009, it was about 6 feet tall: So, looking back, I have had mine for longer and it was probably a much larger shrub than yours to start with. Also, mine was really not growing rapidly until a couple of years ago, so it took a good couple of years for it to establish itself. So if I were you, I would not worry too much about it... I hope this is helpful! Good luck.

Well, of course, I'm the butterfly gardener on the forum, and my granddaughter is now 5 years old. She and mom live with me. She has been helping me butterfly garden for 2 years now, since she was 3. I wouldn't advise some of the plants because some of them are poisonous. However, he would probably love to see parsley worms on parsley or fennel, and they are both easy to grow. The caterpillars metamorph into the beautiful black swallowtail butterflies. We hand-raised them. If you want to know more, let me know. But, my granddaughter can tell everybody the entire life process of a butterfly now! She likes salad, so we grew mesclun mix for her. We also raised the tomato hornworms that we found on the tomato plants - they are beautiful hummingbird moths. Tomato foliage is poisonous, so be careful. I taught my granddaughter that we always wash our hands after feeding the caterpillars, or you can just simply watch them grow on the plants. Grow some snapdragons (it may be a bit late to find them now), and show him how the "snap". The snapdragons are also a host plant for the beautiful Buckeye butterflies. I grew a contorted mulberry in the backyard, and now it is perfect for her to climb in. She calls it her tree. We also are growing pawpaw trees. Of course, she thinks they are named after her grandpa, whom she calls pawpaw. She loves to dig in the yard, and I have to be careful of the "pitfalls" now of gardening with a young one. But, she loves flowers and weeds, dirt and mud, watering anything but the plants, and roly-polys. She has a bug container now that she puts some of the bugs she finds in there. She loves ladybugs, too. I teach her to appreciate the insects in nature and we watch them grow. She would rather be outside that indoors any day. And she will dig up weeds and transplant them all over the yard. Actually, some of them have taken root, and it pleases her to no end. I buy some plants for her to pot up. The other day she potted up catnip for our cats. She loved that because right after she potted it up, George (our cat) came over and started chewing on a leaf! Herbs are fun, too, because kids are tactile and have a very good sense of smell. We grow lavendar, fennel, parsley, hyssop, mint, lemon balm, and lots of "smell good" plants. Nasturtiums are edible plants that you can put the flowers in a salad. He might really like that. If he wants to plant a few, they are harmless for him. I hope you have a great time on your project with your son, and welcome to the forum! Susan

I have a few tricks with mine. If it is warm out, I set up the sprinkler and I place it so it can water some of my beds and then cascade back out to the lawn where my daughter can run through it. Waters plants and she loves to play in it. I put two or three different snacks in the little half size plastic bags along with a drink on her picnic table and put the little umbrella up. If she starts to get a little tired or has had too much sun, she has a great place to sit in the shade and wait for her second wind. She has a little shovel, trowel, pail, etc and I give her areas to play in and dig. I also identify weeds and show her how to pull them out and collect them in her pail. She is thrilled to show me how many she has in there (sometimes there are some that weren't weeds as well, but that is what you get for child labor ;-) If I am planting flowers, she either holds the plant so I can spread the dirt back in or vice versa. If I am weeding or pruning, I use a bin that is light enough that she can drag it around with me. I sometimes fill a 5 gallon bucket with water and she runs back and forth to use it to fill up her little watering can and water whatever she wants. She loves daisies so I have different varities planted all over the yard. She is allowed to pick any daisies that are in bloom so she will run from bed to bed to see if there are blooms so she can make a "bouquet." She probably spends half the time with me and half the time doing the other things I have set up on her own and I get a few hours to work in the garden. Priceless!