We arc becoming more and more appreciative of brooms and
in small gardens they are invaluable. They are amongst the many plants which suffer more from wrong treatment than -wholesome neglect. Light-hearted folk who apply the shears vaguely should be kept well away from them, and to prune vigorously a fully-grown broom is wellnigh certain to be fatal. Brooms should be carefully pruned from the first. Directly they have finished flowering all the flowering shoots should be shortened, no seed pods left, and the bush pruned otherwise very slightly indeed, and only just enough to keep it a good shape. The work should be done in showery weather. They resent careless transplanting, and the ball of soil round the
roots should be disturbed as little as possible. Brooms clO not seem to take kindly to chalky soils. Rosemary is another shrub which suffers much from too vigorous pruning. Left to grow naturally, its long beautiful branches are wreathed in lavender blue flowers for at least two months in the year, but a clipped bush is usually a depressing sight. A neglected bush, however, is apt to grow straggly, and one has • to avoid the two extremes. InCidentally, why is this lovely shrub not used more to surround the garages which are 'such an eyesore in nearly every small garden ? Efforts to grow creepers by placing trellis work are usually futile, for the ground is naturally poor and dry. But this is just the soil in which rosemary flourishes, and when fully grown the plants not_only reach about six, feet high but their bushy evergreen growth
M
must keep out many degrees of frost.
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