CLASSIC COLOUR — BUT PROTECT THE HOUSEHOLD HEAD

By Richard Wright - Friday, March 28, 2008

Cytisus praecox puts on a spectacular show. Picture by Roseanna Wright.

GARDENING
NEW brooms offer a sweep of colour in the garden.
A great advantage of cytisus scoparious, the common broom, is that it is fast growing and quick to establish, meaning it can be bought small, and cheaply.
I purchased a couple a good few years ago now in one of those little Woolworth boxes. Impressive they were not.
But, within a couple of years, despite having less than ideal shade and drought conditions, they put on a beautiful show of colour — one a pastel yellow specimen, the other the classic yellow and deep red, the best.
It was the bi-colour that brought back memories of my shaded childhood garden in The Strand in Ryde, where each year the faithful broom would put on a show that lit the garden despite its relatively small stature.
Beautiful broom has an abundance of flowers and cuts a real dash of late spring colour.
The common broom reaches a maximum height of about 1.5 metres, and is the subject of much folklore. It has been used medicinally by herbalists for many generations.
The saying: “A new broom sweeps clean,” is thought to come from the Sussex rhyme that informs us that sweeping the house with a flowered branch of broom will also sweep the head of the house away. Charming.
My brooms were swept away by drought and lack of care but the shrub is surprisingly tolerant of a range of conditions.
They prefer full sun but will tolerate shade.
They particularly like poor, acid, soils but most are lime tolerant too.
It’s worth cutting back new shoots after flowering to keep the shrub youthful but avoid cutting into old wood when doing so because that can be a killer.
In addition to the common broom other types are legion.
Decumbens is ideal for ground cover or rock gardens, producing brilliant yellow flowers and covering probably a square metre.
Porlock is bigger, with a height and spread of three metres at maturity and makes a fine shrub border specimen.
Cytisus x praecox Warminster is one of my pair, with its profusion of pale yellow.
Married to cytisus Maria Burkwood, with its ruby red, the pair were a pretty picture and may well come again to my garden in Oakhill Road.

A HELPING HAND FOR SQUIRRELS
ONE of the delights of this column is being able to make even a tiny difference.
And I’m delighted to say a piece of a few months ago struck a chord with an award-winning enterprise that has carved out a living offering recreational tree climbing.
My family had noticed other animals in trouble — road-kill carnage of red squirrels in Calthorpes Road, between Ryde and Seaview.
The reason was tree surgeon Russell Page was injured and was unable to fill the hoppers each side of the road rope bridge designed to encourage the squirrels to cross the road above the traffic, not beneath the wheels.
Russell had kindly done it since 1999, using food supplied by Helen Butler’s Wight Squirrel Project.
A squished squirrel was there to be seen most days and we wondered how that could ever be sustained.
Help was at hand. Goodleaf Climbing proprietor Paul McCathie scampers up the trees and re-fills the hoppers every three weeks now. And he has made a real difference.

CLASSIC COLOUR — BUT PROTECT THE HOUSEHOLD HEAD

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