If you’re looking for a plant that ticks all the boxes, you can’t go wrong with a blueberry. 

These hardy plants are easy to grow and make attractive garden shrubs, with deep green foliage, white or pink flowers and inky blue fruit. They thrive in acidic soil, don’t need a pollination partner (so you can get a good crop from just one plant), and because they’re naturally neat and compact plants, you can grow them anywhere - in containers, in the ground, on a patio or balcony. In fact our fruit grower, John, thinks they’re the best fruit you can grow in a pot! 

The flowers are attractive to bees (all blueberries are RHS Plants for Pollinators) and the berries themselves are packed with goodness, sweet enough to eat straight from the plant and glorious in smoothies, pies, crumbles and jams. But with so many different varieties, how do you choose the best blueberry plant for your garden? We asked our growers and here’s what they said.

Jump to:

• Best early, mid and late season blueberries
• Best tasting blueberry
• Best cropping blueberry
• The most unusual blueberry
• The best looking blueberry
• The best blueberry for pots
• The easiest blueberry to grow
• The best for freezing

The best early, mid and late season blueberries

The blueberry picking season lasts from July to September, with different varieties cropping at different times within this period. This could influence your choice of variety, especially if you always holiday at the same time of year - choose wisely and you’ll never miss a berry harvest. The aptly named Earliblue is ideal if you can’t wait. It’s the first blueberry to crop, ripening at the start of July, with the high yielding early season variety Patriot hot on its heels. 

Goldtraube is our grower’s favourite mid season blueberry, with beautifully sweet fruit ripening between July and August. If you’re in a warmer area, then late season Ozarkblue is well worth growing, for crops from late August into September.

The best tasting blueberry

This is a bit like choosing a favourite from your seven cats, because they all taste amazing (the blueberries, that is, before you call the RSPCA), but if I had to, I’d pick 'Herbert'. These blueberries seem to hit the perfect sweet spot between juicy and sweet, whether you bake with them, juice them or eat them straight from the plant.

The best cropping blueberry

Which blueberry produces the most fruit? It depends partly on the weather and growing conditions (especially the amount of sun your plant gets) but for heavy yields, some of the most reliable varieties are Bluecrop, Patriot, Ozarkblue and Jersey. 

To get the maximum crop from your blueberry plants, position them in a sunny sheltered spot, feed them with a balanced plant food each spring and space them well apart if you’re growing more than one, to allow every part of your plants to get enough sunlight and airflow. 

For the biggest blueberries that’ll wow everyone from your friends to the village show judges, pick Chandler. This absolute star produces supersized berries up to 2cm in diameter, and I promise it’s sweeter than its namesake…

If you can’t get enough of blueberries and miss them when they finish cropping, you’ll also love Hortblue Petite. It fruits in July, then again in September. Who knows why, just roll with it.

The most unusual blueberry

The blueberry that sticks two twigs up at the rules - it’s not even blue. Pink Lemonade doesn’t just look different, it’s got a unique taste too, which reminds us of the kind of posh fizzy drink you get in National Trust cafes. It makes a cute contrast for your more conventional blueberry plants, and they’ll even work together to pollinate each other so you get bigger crops from both. Ingenious.

The best looking blueberry

I mean none of them are ugly, but for maximum ornamental value, Sunshine Blue is an eye-catching evergreen blueberry that keeps its good looks all year round.

This neat, naturally well-shaped plant has silvery green foliage and masses of pink flowers in spring, bringing the lively buzz of bees and butterflies to your garden. It doesn’t compromise on taste either, producing plenty of sweet and tangy fruit from mid July. 

If you're a fan of autumn colours however, you’ll like Patriot and Ozarkblue, which have the brightest red, orange and gold tones of the deciduous blueberries.

The best blueberry for pots

All blueberries are perfect for pots, but some varieties are more compact than others. Liberty is one of the smallest, but you won’t be sacrificing anything, as this little beauty punches well above its weight with a crop every bit as good as that of a larger plant. A later season variety that’ll ripen between August and September, Liberty is also a great choice for colder areas.

The easiest blueberry to grow

If you’re a complete beginner and you’re looking for a blueberry that’s easy to grow and care for, we’d go for brilliant all-rounder Bluecrop. This low maintenance plant is super reliable, producing large amounts of fruit from mid July. You’re unlikely to have any issues with this one, due to its strong disease resistance.

Blueberries are generally very hardy plants which crop well in cold areas, but the best for those of us with more Northern inclement weather conditions are hard-as-nails Northland, with a hardiness rating of H6 (cold tolerant down to minus 20°C) and Jersey, which avoids the problem of blossom being destroyed by late frosts, by flowering later in the season.

The most popular blueberry

Millions of muffin munchers can’t be wrong. The most popular blueberry varieties in the UK are the early season Duke, which grows well in even the most northerly areas and produces very respectable crops of light blue, mild tasting berries and mid season Goldtraube, a sweet and juicy crowdpleaser that’s equally good in bakes or eaten fresh.

Best for freezing

What if you get such a mega blueberry crop that you can’t eat them all? It has been known. In that scenario, you’ll want a variety that’s especially good for freezing, such as Brigitta (named after the rude forthright von Trapp kid in The Sound of Music) or Draper (no idea where the name comes from, sorry).

These hardcore berries will keep in the freezer for up to ten months - you don’t even have to defrost them before baking with them - simply extract from under the oven chips and throw a handful into your muffin mix or smoothie maker.

Still can’t decide?

Fair enough, you don’t have to. John and the team have put together their three favourite blueberry varieties in one pack so you can judge for yourself. They’ll all pollinate each other to give you a bigger crop - and even better, they’re chosen to fruit at different times in the season, so you get blueberries in succession right from July to September!

Eager to get started with your new plant? You need our complete blueberry grow guide.