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Cultivating Broom in a Garden
 rooms are best introduced to the garden as young, container grown plants. Think long and hard before putting them in as they do not take kindly to being transplanted. Choose a sunny position, sheltered if possible, although they will tolerate a windy site if staked. In some instances, they have been used as wind breaks and as a nurse crop around young saplings. One advantage is that rabbits are not partial to them.
Most of the species are lime tolerant but Cytisus scoparius and Cytisus multiflorus and their mixed offspring (most of the hardy hybrids) do not last long on poor, shallow, chalky soils. They prefer neutral or add soils, or deep loam over chalk. Larger hybrid brooms benefit from pruning.
The majority flower on the previous year's growth and long shoots should be cut back hard after flowering, taking care not to cut into the older wood. Brooms that have become leggy, bare and hard wooded are best discarded. The few that produce flowers on the current season's growth, such as the late flowering C nigricans, need pruning in the spring.
Brooms are, in general, not long lived, so it may be worth propagating favourite varieties early on. Species can be propagated by semi-ripe cuttings in summer or by seed in April. Hybrids need to be propagated by semi-ripe cuttings in late summer.
Brooms do not need fertilisers or manures as, being in the legume family, they make their own. They have a very handy relationship with a friendly soil bacteria, the rhizobia, which make their home in the roots.
The plant, as with all members of the pea family, gives the rhizobia a home and a supply of sugar, and, in return, the bacteria pay their rent by changing nitrogen gas (which accounts for about three quarters of our air) into plant fertiliser. What more could you ask for? |
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