How to grow bamboo – and enjoy it!

An alternative title might be  – “What you should know about Bamboo before you buy”

Many gardeners do not fully appreciate what they are getting in to when they buy their first bamboo plant. There’s a lot of hype surrounding it that doesn’t prepare people sufficiently to make the right choice when choosing the Bamboo variety that’s best for them. Gardening, and bamboo in particular, is too expensive to make unfortunate decisions which later have to be reversed at greater expense and with even more time.

Many gardeners I’ve spoken with have grown bamboo only to regret their purchase because “I never realised just what it was capable of”.

For a bamboo afficionado like myself, it’s not what I like to hear, because in most cases these same gardeners would still be growing and enjoying their bamboo if they had been properly informed and able to make the right decision for themselves at the outset.

Bamboo emerging from its 'silo'

In this post I’d like to:

1. Highlight my own experience of growing 17 different bamboo varieties in my UK garden
2. Show what bamboo is capable of doing
3. Recommend the best and safest method of growing it

Bamboo Basics or ‘debunking the myth’
Bamboo is a form of grass. That should tell you how much it needs cutting! In many countries bamboo is used  as a scoffold pole on all kinds of building projects including skyscrapers. Prospective bamboo purchasers will hear or read such things like:

1. “It’s a clump-forming bamboo.”
2. “You can control its spread.”
3. “You can contain its spread with a restrictive skirt around it undergound”.

After 10 years growing and enjoying bamboo I reckon the only truth in these declarations is their acknowledgement that bamboo can spread! The devil is in the detail.

Conceiveably, bamboo has no limit to the extent it can spread. The rate and extent bamboo grows is dependent upon the bamboo variety, climate and ground conditions. Dehydration – whether by drought or the effects of prolonged periods of wind is the biggest danger facing bamboo. Generally speaking, it doesn’t like stoney ground and most varieties growing in Northern European climates, like the UK for example, rarely attain 1/3 of the maximum height they are capable of growing.

Anyone who suggests that bamboo may be restricted by a skirt in the ground has not seen bamboo behaving like in the photograph below!

Bamboo will 'leap' any barrier

Bamboo is a comparatively slow starter and will take 3-4 years to settle-in after planting. Most bamboos create a network of roots that normally extend to just 0.6m (2ft) deep. There are exceptions to this, one are the chusquea group which can grow down to 1.5m (5ft) deep.

The next photograph shows me beside one of my emerging bamboo. Just ten days after it first emerged in to daylight.

Mike Gilmore beside a Bamboo shoot just 10 days old!

Enjoying Bamboo
My bamboo is regularly cut down. ‘Regular patrols’ are the only way to keep a large area under check. Despite this, I do love the beauty of the plant and the way it moves and sounds in a breeze. It’s fantastic and well worth growing.

And the wildlife love it too! Barn owls fly regular sweeps through it just above the paths around dusk. Hedgehogs will scuffle through the undergrowth at night hunting down slugs and snails. Blackbirds and thrushes are continually heard turning over the leaf carpet during the day and during the winter months I estimate about 300 finches return nightly to roost within the safety of my bamboo ‘grove’.

The Best Method of Growing and Containing Bamboo
Choose your Bamboo carefully before buying. (I recommend not growing the shorter broad leaf Sasa and Pseudosasa Bamboos which more than make up for their lack of vertical stature with their horizontal spread).

OK. You’ve got your chosen bamboo variety which looks lovely in its pot. Now go and buy a plastic dustbin! Bury the dustbin in the ground so the top 75mm (3 inches) are above the surface. In this way, when your plant does begin to spread you can see it happening and do something about it, quickly, easily and efficiently.

Mike Gilmore beside Chusquea gigantea and Gunnera manicata

Bamboos currently under cultivation by Mike Gilmore

1. Chusquea gigantea
2. Indocalamus tessallatus
3. Semiarundiaria fastuosa viridis
4. Semarundiaria yashedake ‘Kimmei’
5. Pleioblastus pygmaea
6. Yushania maculata
7. Thamnocalamus crassinodus ‘Kew Beauty’
8. Fargesia nitida
9. Phyllostachys aurea ‘Koi’
10. Phyllostachys vivax
11. Phyllostachys vivax ‘Aureacaulis’
12. Phyllostachys bambusoides aurea
13. Phyllostachys bambusoides ‘Holochrysa’
14. Phyllostachys bambusoides ‘Castillonis’
15. Phyllostachys nigra ‘Boryana’
16. Phyllostachys viridis sulphurea
17. Phyllostachys pubescens