Hmmm... Well, I usually give a plant a year to become established... and I water MY sweet broom like once a week, deeply, when it's hot...less when it cools down. I don't know about that tag... sometimes plants are shipped out from other rainy areas... I actually saw a plant at my local nursery that I and Sunset Gardening book consider a bog plant labeled "drought tolerant" then it turned out it came from Oregon... their drought is when it doesn't rain for a week. :o)

It was written:
"plant labeled "drought tolerant" then it turned out it came from Oregon... their drought is when it doesn't rain for a week."

Ummm. Oregon has a Mediterranean climate. Although our winters can be downright soggy, our summers are dry. And that's all summer long.

oh come on jean! I practically grew up in Salem.... and I tell ya, Portland gets more rain than we do in Sacramento! I guess it depends on where in Oregon you are talking about... but Western Oregon is notorious for it's rains...and you know it, thus the name "Pacific North Wet". So why else would a bog plant shipped from oregon be labeled drought tolerant?

I had the same questionable behavior from my second (and last) C. spachianus. It was going along great, blooming, looking pretty, then it just started shrivelling and dropping everything. The wind came through one day, and it just tipped over. When I pulled it out, there was just a nub, with no root system left.

I never did figure out if it was a gopher or too much constant wet weather in winter, but I decided I'd never be suckered in again. :D

Brenda

Brenda, I lost my first one, I think because I did the drought thing... not sure, some plants just die on me. :o) But I tried once more and voila, this time I had success! I think they are worth it, such a profusion of sweet smelling yellow flowers.

Are my sweet brooms all dead? They look dead and the leaves are dried all due to a freeze we had last month but I thought these were supposed to be evergreen (or have I been misinformed)?

I clipped one back just to see if the branches were still green inside and yes they are. So in your opinion are they going to come back in spring or should I take them out and replace them with something? Also, should I clip them all back or just leave them and see if they come back? Thanks, Pat

Pat, you might want to just give them some time. I posted the original question, and I'm glad to report that mine have come back. In late October some of them started leafing out. In late November I dug up two (out of six) that still had dead looking branches. After I dug them up I took a look at the root system, and wished I had left them a while longer. The roots were quite fresh looking, and had grown a lot since I planted them in the spring.

ok thank you . I know we are in a different planting zone but I searched all of gardenweb and this post came up..I wonder if I killed the one I clipped back because it might force it to sprout now and there is still some cold winter coming up in my area. oh well live and learn, I will just leave them and see what happens.

i think im going through the same thing, I live in louisiana and i did research on the sweet broom and went ahead and planted one and its been about a week since i planted it and was curious how much water and how often should i water it at the beginning of planting, yesterday the blooms and leaves looked wilted so i did water it and im hoping it makes it

I've tried growing this in the ground twice and both times it didnt work. Same thing as the original poster to this message, also between lawn and sidewalk. I also tried it between lawns (neighbors and mine). I gave up on sweet brooms.

Someone else told me you need to really watch it carefully for a year to get it established, they are somewhat picky during the summer and you need to cater to that. Forget that, I got alot of other things to do.

So no sweet brooms for me :-(

Ack. I transplanted mine twice in one year! What was I thinking?....well, the first place I put it didn't have enough room (when it grows up), so I dug it up and put it in a 15 gallon nursery pot, hoping to find a better site later. It lost all of it's leaves and looked like a bunch of green twigs! I'm seeing yellow on it now, so hopefully it will survive my fickleness!

I purchased a small sweet broom last spring. It bloomed profusely, but also grew like gangbusters. I transplanted it to a MUCH larger pot in the fall. It seemed to do well until very cold weather set in [January], when all of its leaves fell off. It is now March and all of my other plants are growing and/or starting to bud. The sweet broom is just sitting there with nothing more than stick-like branches [which are green on the inside. What gives?

I just bought a Sweet Broom (cytisus X spachianus), but I was reading about cytisus scoparius and it said it's a very invasive pest along the west coast. Is Spachianus also invasive, I live in Arizona. Such a shame, I just bought it today at Home Depot and I fell in love with it.

Hello,

I just recently purchased a sweet broom and adore it.
Then I learned that it is supposedly a very invasive plant
here in California. Is this true?
If so, can I contain it by keeping it in a container or should
I take it back?

Thanks for any responses!!!

Some of the broom's are invasive in socal.

Here is a link that might be useful: invasive website

Sweet Broom (Cytisus spachianus) isn't known to be invasive in wild lands - that is, it isn't known to spread rampantly to areas outside of gardens and displace native vegetation like Scotch Broom and a few other species of brooms can. The term invasive is used two ways. One is to describe plants that can spread in a garden and be a pain. The other is to describe plants that can spread outside of gardens, displace native vegetation, and cause real ecological damage. I am not sure Sweet Broom is either one, but it is worth keeping in mind that there are really two meanings of the term invasive.

Ladyslppr-if you followed the link I provided it explains the brooms and how CAL-IPC defines the term invasive.
I provided it so people can understand and make their own choice.

Scotch broom is extremely invasive. I believe that the plant should be completely iradicated. Here S. Cal even the ubiquitous ice-plant that was planted along the sand dunes have been taken out. I don't mind non-native plants in gardens and such, but not in wildlands.