So far we have volunteers, mostly led by Gabriola Land and Trails Trust, going out for a few hours now and again to pull broom or cut it back. Gabriola property owners often get rid of the broom on their property, or prevent the plant from getting established in the first place. This is grand, but we’ve still got a very long way to go. Broom is prolific, and it’s all over the island.

It seems to me that we need a use for broom, so that people will go take it away because they want it, or can profit from it. Can we come up with some sort of cottage industry that would use vast amounts of broom, and turn that broom into some sort of product for people to sell? If we could do that, it would provide employment AND broom removal, all in one fell swoop.

So what can broom be used for? A page at knottybits.com notes that

The plant is reported to have been introduced from Europe primarily as an ornamental, and possibly with the intent of using the thick stems to make brooms (Peterson and Prasad 1998, Aguinagalde et al. 2002). Peterson and Prasad (1998) report the additional vector as ship ballast soil, and also that the seeds were roasted and made into a hot beverage and the shoots were used to make beer.

Well. Some of those ideas seem a bit peculiar or ill-advised, but using broom to make brooms seems sensible enough. Botanical.com says that

The twigs and branches are serviceable not only for making brooms, but are also used for basket-work, especially in the island of Madeira. They are sometimes used in the north of England and Scotland for thatching cottages and cornricks, and as substitutes for reeds in making fences or screens.

(That botanical.com page contains all sorts of interesting historical tidbits. How unfortunate that there are no sources cited!)

Anyway, what do you think? What useful or beautiful thing could people make out of scotch broom? Would finding a use for broom help us to eradicate it from Gabriola, or have I just had one beer too many?

At Drumbeg, Gabriola’s battle against invasive Scotch broom continues: Gabriola Land and Trails Trust organizes broom-pulling work-parties, and volunteers yank broom from the ground so that native plants can re-establish themselves.

The progress this year is amazing. Next time you’re at Drumbeg, wander out to the place where the most broom grows, and take a look. Go up the meadow past the fruit trees and see what’s been done at the top of the little hill, too. It’s stunning.

If Gabriola’s broom-pulling volunteers continue at this rate, I think they might get most of the broom out of Drumbeg within the next year or so.

What I don’t understand is this: why take the time to tie an invasive plant label to this broom plant? In the time it took to do that, the person doing the tagging could have just pulled the plant out. In what way is tagging better than removing?

I know there’s been a huge effort on Gabriola (thanks, GALTT) to remove broom from Drumbeg, so that native plant species can flourish instead of this invasive plant. I’ve seen the results of the broom-pulling work-parties, but have never come across labelled broom plants before.

Last Sunday the GALTT volunteers were at it again, this time attacking broom in a grassy clearing just off North Road in the Tunnel area. Here are the results:

Impressive, no? The photo shows just part of a very large pile of broom — all uprooted by GALTT. That’s North Road in the background.

Here’s more on Scotch Broom from the Invasive Plants Council of BC.

If you’d like to help GALTT, you can do so by joining them or by volunteering. Watch the Gabriola events calendar for GALTT — and other — events.