Good to know, hoovb. And I have the same problem here with the birds. And have trouble with other varmints - rabbits, ground squirrels, mice and roof rats. Way, way too many rodent-types out here. Very hard to keep any fruit for myself, except lemons and limes. Patty S.

Evergreen clematis can be kind of like having an elephant in the living room. Gets big, and unmannerly, and rampant. Can overwhelm a small yard. And it looks ratty in winter, even though it's evergreen. Plus, bare at the base, like most all vines. The osmanthus is an excellent choice - evergreen, good bushy habit, pretty fragrant flowers early in spring, takes well to hedging. But yes, slow growing, which will make maintenance easier but you'd be living with the chain link for some time until it fills in. There's an osmanthus delavayi hedge across the street from me and it's gorgeous and it gets no care at all, just an annual trimming whether it needs it or not. Japanese hollies are another common hedge for the size you're talking about. Maintenance free basically, and a very nice glossy dark green with black berries, but not flashy at all. Very serviceable. No noticeable flowers, unlike the osmanthus. Annual vines might be a good idea for filling in temporarily. Or, I have a section of chain link covered with a very heavy duty shade cloth, to keep my dogs from barking at the cats and squirrels in the neighbor's yard. You can use bamboo screening the same way, and it would be more attractive. Once your hedge fills in it would be easy to take out. One school of thought on the edibles next to roads issue is, that what you're buying at the grocery store is already as contaminated with the same kinds of stuff; and that if the pollution levels are so bad that you shouldn't be eating this stuff, then you shouldn't be breathing the air either. We live in an imperfect world. But the blueberry wants to be arching out and I'm not sure how it would take to being sheared into a hedge anyway. Yeah, I was going to point out on the barberry, that they're very thorny and not entirely appropriate for a confined space next to a walkway. Beautiful though.

I happy that I'm getting the thumbs up from all of you on the blueberry hedge. I have been able to track down more than 15 varieties that will do well in my zone. I will have to ammend with peat moss since they like an acidic soil. They do like a lot of water too which could be a bad thing in a drought year but the extra work of getting water to them would be worth it. Mrs G. A mixed hedge sounds like a good idea. I am going to put arbors in my hedge to allow access through the four sides of my garden. It's a good excuse to add more arbors ;) Nicki, Some of the berries I have read about produce 10-20 pounds of fruit per season. One I found actually bears fruit twice. Many of them can be grown in pots too. One is even evergreen and doesn't take many chilling hours in winter so would be an excellent choice for you, it's called Sunshine Blue. Surely you could squeeze in one little pot of blueberries? MeMo

I've been going back and forth with my order of prime ark freedom. These berries sure sound good. But they're sold out now; next year. I did get vintage, natanala, Caroline, Anne, fall gold, and heritage. Even though I'm in zone 10, you'd think it was zone 7. Vintage just sprouted, Caroline, fall gold, and heritage came up too. Barely any growth on any of them, but fall gold is setting berries. Still waiting for natanala and anne to sprout. If these don't sprout I will buy some new ones next year, the roots were alive when I received them. My heritage were stolen from the community garden. I grew it last year and I really like it. If Caroline or vintage are as productive as heritage I may forego It. I only get the fall crop, but heritage just keeps pushing out berries for months. The taste is just ok for fresh eating from my container garden, Thats why I decided to try planting in the community garden. Still I prefer volume to flavor. Flavor changes every year, but my belly fills on volume. I'm not as good at berries as everyone else on here is. My boysenberry plant looks like a forest in the pot. Hope I get berries this year. Marion had one long cane from last year, it just put out a new cane. Last year I didn't know about pinching so no laterals. Think I will pinch the new cane when it gets a foot tall. They haven't fruited yet. The raspberries grow at a mannered pace that's easy to control. Blackberries on the otherhand seem to leap out of their pots searching for other pots to conquer. So for me blackberry must be grown in a pot near concrete so it can't excape to the wildlife. Fall gold bud in full shade Emerald blueberry shading peas, clover, and beans. Lettuce is going to seed. Boysenberry and beans, varigated solomens seal in the bottom of the pot. The fall gold is growing behind the chard leaf and gets very little sun. The beans have their own trellis in the pot next to the boysenberry but next thing I knew they decided that the preferred the trellis on the boysenberry pot. Now they're climbing in the hanging basket, and then to the moon. Marion berry is wrapped around the window first-time growing blackberry so I didn't pinch,it just has two canes. I just pinched them and got a small amount of branching. Would love to have a twenty foot long thorny branched cane. Well its not the prettiest but I'm eating good. Sunshine blue, and a volenteer tomato,please don't mind my spider webs, that's my only pest control besides ladybugs. I try to keep them in check, but on a rooftop berry garden is a fly eaters paradise, so they keep coming back. Spider mites are bad right now, but they're going for beans, sunflowers and weeds. Those plants all grown so fast who cares. The white flies came and bite the pineapple weed, it was instant death. They've learn to avoid the epazote but since pineapple weed is a native and looks just like pigs lettuce it was a killing field millions of dead white flies. FYI that tomato plant would be full of tomatoes if the local mammals weren't swiping them. I managed to get two amish paste because they filled up on every one of my super sweet pomegranates and sun ripened cherry tomatoes and then snubbed their noses at a bland paste tomato. These little blueberry seedlings are hidden somewhere in that food forest. Sharp, misty, and the ?. Only three inches tall, misty lost all her leaves but everyone else is growing well. Gotta get some peat and surround those tiny little roots. I think misty wants more sun, but at two inches in overcast may, it ain't going to happen. If she were a foot tall it would be better. June gloom is coming so I won't have sun until July. Hang in there Misty!