Cultivation
Brooms tolerate (and often thrive best in) poor soils and growing conditions. In cultivation they need little care, though they need good drainage and perform poorly on wet soils.
They are widely used as ornamental landscape plants and also for wasteland reclamation (e.g. mine tailings) and sand dune stabilising.
Tagasaste (Chamaecytisus proliferus syn. C. palmensis), a Canary Islands native, is widely grown as sheep fodder.
Species of broom popular in horticulture are purple broom (Chamaecytisus purpureus; purple flowers), Atlas broom (or Moroccan broom) (Argyrocytisus battandieri, syn. Cytisus battandieri, with silvery foliage), dwarf broom (Cytisus procumbens), Provence broom (Cytisus purgans) and Spanish broom (Spartium junceum).
Many of the most popular brooms in gardens are hybrids, notably Kew broom (Cytisus × kewensis, hybrid between C. ardoinii and C. multiflorus) and Warminster broom (Cytisus × praecox, hybrid between C. purgans and C. multiflorus).
Read more about this topic: Broom (shrub)
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