Nursery School: Avoid Bamboo Like the Plague

Danny Flanders

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© Dorling Kindersley Limited 2008

Yes it's pretty. But if you aren't careful it can take over your yard.

Looking for the perfect privacy screen for shielding your back yard from nosy neighbors? For many, the quick -- and I do mean quick -- solution is bamboo.

Big mistake.

Bamboo, which technically is a giant grass, is one of the world’s most invasive plants. Once established, it is literally next to impossible to control. The sprouts that shoot up from the ground each spring can grow 12 inches a day! The underground roots of common running “fishpole” bamboo, which can easily reach 15 feet tall, can travel as far as 20 feet or more from the original clump.

There’s no denying bamboo makes a pretty exotic screen. And with its slender form, it is seemingly ideal for tight urban spaces. Yet, in no time new shoots will appear outside its planting space, creating a maintenance nightmare.

If you simply want to control its spread, it's best to create a barrier, though sometimes even that doesn’t work. Dig a trench two feet deep around the clump and insert 24-inch-wide aluminum flashing, leaving several inches of it above ground to prevent its roots from climbing over. Still, know that bamboo has been known to run even below concrete barriers and resurface on the other side, so this is no guaranteed fortress.

If you really want to get rid of all your bamboo, brace yourself for being a vigilante. As soon as the first sprouts emerge in spring, knock them back to ground level using a shovel and continue for several weeks while the shoots are tender and before they become woody and tough. Then, using a paintbrush, apply the strongest recommended strength of Roundup to the cuts. Finally, keep an eye out throughout summer for those stubborn renegade runners.

So is all bamboo evil and therefore must be destroyed? Not at all. Some clumping (vs. running) varieties are not invasive at all. Still, to be safe, it’s best to use them in container gardens, which make great accents and focal points, especially the popular black bamboo varieties. Be aware that most clumping bamboos are not cold hardy, so it’s best to treat them as annuals. The Fargesia genus provides some of the hardiest clumpers, and one cultivar in particular, ‘Green Panda,’ reaches 6-8 feet, so when planted in a group it makes an excellent screen (Plant bamboo in spring, not fall, to avoid winter burn on plants).

If you’d like to avoid bamboo altogether, consider a few alternatives for screening, such as the grassy-like Carex, or sedges and evergreen conifers such as ‘Green Giant’ thuja, “Emerald Green’ arborvitae and Leyland cypress.

And just to set the record straight for all you indoor gardeners, that “Lucky Bamboo” that became all the rage several years ago . . . it’s not a bamboo at all but a dracena.

Ah, the wonders of this mysterious grass continue to run rampant!

12 Comments About this Article

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  • David Benfield
    I own a bamboo business that primarily helps people control their bamboo and it's sad to see so much misinformation in this article. HGTV, you should do your homework. Please people, don't use aluminum flashing. They make a special barrier specifically for bamboo - I've installed thousands of feet of it in the past years and it works like a charm. Bamboo isn't difficult to contain if you know how and is debatable whether it's invasive at all. I've successfully helped dozens of people remove, contain, manage, and plant bamboo and the only difference between me and all the people with horror stories is correct information.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • Clinton D McDowell
    I second that information Susanne. Confining running bamboo w/ 60 mil & even 80 mil plastic won't rot over time & if properly installed, absolutely contains the plant. Perhaps if HGTV Garden enthusiasts spent a little time invested in learning bamboo siviculture, the current overgrown areas would be controlled better providing nutritious bamboo shoots in the springtime, hardy useable well seasoned poles for multiple home uses + any excess could be sold to regional collection centers to be transformed into the 10,000 uses that bamboo is known to provide. Thomas Jefferson once said .. "The most useful service we can render a culture is to add a new plant to it's agriculture." Add the plant then educate yourself as to how it is cultivated & reap the benefits to this most noble of plants.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • Danny Flanders
    Susanne, you may want to re-read the article. Clumping bamboo is addressed in paragraph 7.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • Mary Ann Silverman
    It's sad to see such a negative article on a plant that is really not that difficult to contain. You just have to know how to do it and commit to doing it annually. We have quite a few groves of running bamboo that are well contained simply to annual rhizome pruning and shoot harvesting. There are few plants I'm familiar with that won't grow where you don't want them if you don't take measures to insure they stay within desired bounds. It also seems quite odd to me that following the article above is "We Recommend".....a photo of a running bamboo.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • Noah Bell
    Not to mention they showcase an 'invasive' bamboo with a photo of... Fargesia nitida, which is a very tight clumping bamboo. In response to the article, as noted in the first and second paragraphs, bamboo can spread out from the initial planting site. However the control methods outlined in the fifth paragraph are not at all appropriate. The best way to contain a running-type bamboo is actually to edge the plant twice a year; late summer and mid-fall. The rhizomes are naturally shallow and if you sever them, they stop growing. If you do have to use barrier, metal flashing is one of the poorer choices; it degrades over time, can leech into the soil, and usually isn't deep enough to make a difference. Better to use HDPE plastic sheets, 60 or 80 mil thick. And the methods for removal listed in paragraph 6 are a little excessive; rather, simply dig up as much as you can and let any survival shoots lead you to pieces you missed. Just knocking the survival shoots over will eventually starve the plant out.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • sirshannon
    kudzu isn't difficult to contain if you know how and is debatable whether it's invasive at all. I've successfully helped dozens of people remove, contain, manage, and plant kudzu and the only difference between me and all the people with horror stories is correct information.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • David Benfield
    ...and yet where are the kudzu nurseries?

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • Daisy
    It drives me crazy when people don't read the entire article. There are several examples of noninvasive bamboo in the article. I used to live next door to a lady that planted bamboo and it took over her entire yard to the point where you couldn't see her house anymore, then it found it's way into MY yard. It was a nightmare! Why did I have to deal with her problem? I wish she would have read this story before she planted it.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • David Benfield
    Daisy I do understand your issue and it is unfortunately a common problem. However, there are things both your neighbor and you could've done to contain it but unfortunately many people have been mislead by lots of bad information (for example, the above article suggests aluminum flashing) which only make matters worse. When those wrong solutions don't work people come to the conclusion that bamboo is invasive and impossible to control. It's simply not true; but I do wish your experience with the world's most sustainable resource had not been a negative one.

    Posted 3 months ago

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  • FourDeuce
    In the course of doing research for the article the author should have done some research on bamboo. Up to 12 inches in one day? My bamboo can grow more than 5 feet in one day during the Spring, and that's not unusual. I've been growing bamboo here in the Ozarks for more than 10 years, and the "monster" is nowhere near as bad as the article tries to make it look.

    Posted 3 months ago

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