While driving down the street, have you ever looked out the window and wondered if there was a house behind all the bamboo? What do you suppose it is like to live next door to a place where bamboo has taken control?
At the nursery where I work we sell several varieties of bamboo. I have the reputation at Kokopelli as being the salesperson that refuses to sell bamboo. Actually, I will sell it but not until I have put the customer through an interrogation process. Usually, I begin with "where will this be planted?" If it is anywhere near my neighborhood, I work very hard to try to talk them out of buying the bamboo. If it is outside my neighborhood, then I ask "how do you plan to contain the roots?" Usually, I get a look that tells me they haven't thought about it. At this point, I feel like I should offer suggestions for containing bamboo. So, I turned to some of my biggest consumers for ideas.
The Kansas City Zoo is my largest customer of bamboo. Recently I called Jeff Reinhardt, the zoo's horticulturist, for his suggestions on maintaining it in the landscape. Jeff's response was "When it comes to controlling bamboo, my first tactic is not planting it. Second, I would suggest getting a couple of red panda, Ailurus fulgens. It took two of them roughly twenty-four hours to eat 100 plus clumps that I planted in their exhibit. I am sure the giant pandas would be more efficient than that but they are harder to find." Well, that advice won't help the average homeowner!
Next, I turned to a landscape customer of high-end residential properties. "Reed, how do you control bamboo?" I asked. His answer, "I plant it in containers around the pool and leave it out through the winter expecting it to die," wasn't very much help either.
So, do you have any advice to offer? I've heard that planting bamboo in clay chimney pipes buried in the ground will work for a few years. Bamboo Garden, click here, recommends a stainless steel barrier ring. Have you tried this in your garden?
© Susan Mertz, May 2006. All rights reserved.
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