This is mostly for my Arizona friends, but it may pertain to others depending on where you live; please consult your local nursery...
I have a new favorite tree: the dwarf black mulberry. I planted a dwarf black mulberry about two years ago as a two-foot-tall stick in the ground. Within a year it was about ten feet tall. By year two it was so tall that I needed to massively prune it to keep it at a manageable height since it was well over 15 feet tall. So quick growing? Check.
But it also produces massive quantities of delicious fruits. After one year of growing, we were excited to have the tree covered in berries. They are much more flavorful than the wild mulberries I remember eating in Illinois as a kid (those were essentially tasteless berries that we ate just because they were there). These berries are large, plump, and flavorful. One of my kids described the flavor as a mild blackberry/raspberry mix.
So why is this a recommended tree? First, fast growing trees in Arizona are pretty important, as they provide a lot of shade in a short amount of time.
