Vaccinium corymbosum 'Top Hat' (Highbush Blueberry)

Vaccinium corymbosum 'Top Hat' is a unique cultivar of highbush blueberry, a bushy, densely-branching shrub known and widely regarded for its tasty edible fruits, which are also prized by birds and wildlife. The 'Top Hat' cultivar is unique in that it is a dwarf variety that is commonly referred to as a hybrid of highbush and lowbush (V. angustifolium) blueberries, which is noted for its extremely compact habit attractive, flavorful fruits. Also called a half-highbush, 'Top Hat' grows to only about 1-2' tall and wide, and is considered a late season bush with flowers in May and berries ripening around mid-July.

The 'Top Hat' cultivar's small stature makes it ideal for small garden spaces and compact U-Pick set-ups, with plants producing white or pink-tinged, bell-shaped flowers which turn to berries that are a little larger than a common lowbush blueberry, but with the same delicious, sweet flavor. Blueberry bushes like 'Top Hat' make great additions to low borders and hedge plantings, where you can produce fruit en masse and where fall colors of yellow and orange add multi-season interest, and in containers, where blueberry crops can be harvested easily at your convenience. If utilizing blueberry bushes for fruit production, care should be taken to cover plants while fruit develops to avoid bird damage.

Note: Most highbush blueberries are not self-fertile and require a pollinating partner of a different variety in order to produce good sets of fruit. As both are hybrids, 'North Country' works well as a pollinating pair for 'Top Hat.'