C. Moss                                                                                                                           

Like all plants, Scotch Broom needs water to survive. However it can grow on very little water and it produces a vast amount of seeds as part of its survival strategy.  This past year (2024 and 2025) many have noticed in the Sooke area that broom is flourishing everywhere. It pushes out most native plants with its aggressive growth and the shade cover it produces leads to a dead zone underneath its canopy.  It is tough and resilient and full of compounds that burn easily making it a great forest fire hazard.  

Local groups have organized “broom pulls” for some time now in an effort to control the spread of this invasive plant.  These groups usually try to pull out the roots with the plant as a means of control; however this in itself can stimulate the dormant seeds in the ground to grow.  The dirt clinging to the roots also make it difficult to find commercial chipper/shredder companies to process the plants as the soil, sand and rocks on the roots damage the chipper machine blades.

There is a simple way to avoid this problem. Cut only the above ground plant in the Spring before it flowers and produces seeds. Then there is not a problem with shredding and composting broom.  It spreads from seeds, not underground roots, so “no seeds” means no growth.  Leaving the roots in the ground does mean that the broom will grow again from that root stock and it could become a renewable resource for composted soil. Turning broom into useable compost takes a lot of work piling and turning the compost and mixing in nutrients like horse manure with a tractor.  

A less work intensive method is simply burning the broom at high heat to reduce it to an inert level which can then be mixed with any soil and will not result in further broom growth.  The CRD has a mobile burning unit that can be towed and left in a community for this purpose and then moved to another community to incinerate broom cuttings.  Public pressure is needed on the CRD to make this unit available to more communities. Communities then need to rally residents to cut down broom in the spring and pile it for burning.

Back to the need for water and sun for broom growth.  If you drive along almost any road (Otter Point road is a great example) you will notice that broom is not growing everywhere.  It is growing in areas with exposure to sunlight.  You will see broom on the sunlit side of the road and not in the shaded side of the road.  In our determined rush to clear the land for development we have created the perfect conditions for broom growth – full sunshine.  If we allow the native trees to grow, the shade created by their canopy cover will inhibit or stop the growth of broom.  No broom pull or cutting needed to restore the native growth to the forest.  Where I live there is an old gravel pit choked with ten foot  tall broom, yet thirty meters away, under the shade of native vegetation (trees, salal, ferns, wild berries etc. we do not have broom growing and never have had during the ten years we have lived on this site.