where to get shrubs

this may have been discussed before
sure my situation is not all that uncommon:
I have room enough to plant a nice hedge with shrubs that produce berries,
I have time to plant and care for such a hedge
but funds are very limited, mostly due to the 'have time' ;/

where can I get seedlings, clippings, seed of such shrubs cheap or even free?
not even sure what varieties I am looking for, other than they need to produce food for me oder the wildlive in my garden
in hopes that the berries will turn my wild beasts away from other fruit there

Here are suppliers I've used for seeds of shrubs and trees:

https://www.bountifulgardens.org/departments/114

http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/

Stone fruits tend to come relatively true to seed, grow to shrub size and are tolerant of pruning. Professional orchards in this area keep their trees large shrub size.

Pomegranates are also good hedge plants. There's a strong chance that you can find a local plant to obtain cuttings from. Some people also say they reproduce readily from seed.

https://permies.com/t/48438/trees/Cloning-fruit-nut-trees-woody this thread has some detailed discussion of different methods of reproducing trees. If you have neighbors or wild spaces with productive trees and shrubs you might be able to obtain starts for your own use.

If you google laying hedges, you'll see that full sized trees are often incorporated into the traditional hedgerows of the UK so you don't have to limit your search just to shrubs.

For a really crazy thought, you can set up perching locations for local birds and they'll plant assorted native fruits where you choose. That's why fencelines get so overgrown so fast.

Casie Becker wrote:For a really crazy thought, you can set up perching locations for local birds and they'll plant assorted native fruits where you choose. That's why fencelines get so overgrown so fast.

Before you do this though, have a look at local fencelines to make sure you like the trees your local birds plant. Around here the two most prevalent bird-seeded hedge trees are an invasive Privet and Eastern Red Cedar, which is a juniper that (although it's native) is classed as invasive because it expands like mad when not controlled by wildfire.

ev kuhn wrote:where can I get seedlings, clippings, seed of such shrubs cheap or even free?

My favorite thing to do (although I haven't been doing it long enough to see much results yet) is to pick a bunch of berries and fruit whenever I find them in a wild or feral situation. Elderberries, wild persimmons, crab apples, hackberries, deciduous holly with the pretty red winter berries the birds love -- whatever wild fruit I find that I don't currently need to eat. I scatter half of them fresh along fence lines or anywhere else I'd like to have fruitful shrubbery, and I dry the other half in my dehydrator and include them in the mix whenever I am scattering dynamic accumulator or cover crop seeds. Basically my scheme is to overload my local seed bank with fruit producers, in hopes of future productivity in locations that I am not smart enough to specifically select, or under climate and weather conditions that haven't happened yet.

Obviously there are many more species that I would prefer to have, were I rich enough to buy nursery shrubs and clever enough to ensure their survival. But as I am neither, scattering free local fruit seeds profligately is my next best scheme.