How Blueberries Got to England

I first met Jennifer Trehane of the Dorset Blueberry Company when she came to the Whitesbog Blueberry Festival in southern New Jersey in 2008. Whitesbog is the birthplace of what has become a global commercial blueberry industry.

Dated March 1951, the letter seen below tells just part of the story about how commercial blueberry plants traveled first from southern New Jersey on the Queen Mary to England for the first time. The young plants were then picked up from the South Hampton docks by Jennifer at the request of her father and so began her spirited life as a blueberry grower and educator.

A true blueberry specialist in every sense of the word, in this podcast Jennifer Trehane shares the genuinely charming story of exactly how blueberries first arrived and then stayed in England more than 60 years ago.

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