This Didn't Come Out Right

You know I'm good at limbing things up. Overgrown draggy shrubs and trees look so much better when I get done lifting up the lower branches. But this time not so much.

The Spanish broom by the back fence is old and it has gotten woody and huge. With our wet winter it got even bigger and its branches drooped under snow and then under the weight of heavy blooming.

In late April in full flower

Last winter under wet snow

After it was done blooming this summer, it seemed to be spreading out over the entire strip of gravel that we call our back yard. Stiff branches bent down all the way to the ground. It was taking over the small space.

So I got the pruners out.

Oof. Not the look I was going for

This did not come out the way I wanted. It's tidier and we can walk by it now, while we couldn't before. But brown, dead needle-thin leaves in the interior look awful and the whole lower shrub is full of messy brown needles.

You can see through it now. It's "architectural"

Not what I intended. Open woody stems are sort of sculptural but brown needles and the tufted upright shape aren't great.

There is another Spanish broom by our dining room window, a seedling that took root right behind the pillar and right at the foundation of the house.

A seedling Spanish broom with sweet yellow flowers behind the pillar

It's small and when it flowered it was kind of pretty and arching, not so laden with dense yellow flowers as the old broom in the back (and this young broom had delightfully sweet smelling flowers; the older one is stinky at times).

But I know what a mature Spanish broom can look like after many years, and this one is not in the right space for a huge, woody, un-prunable monster shrub.

Pretty now, but on its way to becoming too big and too hard to manage

I should probably take it out now while I still can. No amount of pruning will really help it as it gets bigger.