Bamboos are beautiful plants that add height, structure and movement to a garden. They come in an astonishing range of culm colours: black, green, yellow, blue, olive, grey, purple, white, brown, red, blotched with brown, yellow with green stripes, green with yellow stripes, green with a black sulcus, and green with multi-coloured stripes. The culms may be grooved, zig-zag, bulbous, or just ridiculously large. The leaves can be tiny and delicate or huge and tropical.
Evergreen plants, bamboos add interest to the garden year round. The shooting season begins in early spring with some Fargesia species and continues at least until August with the late shooting Phyllostachys bambusoides cultivars. The shoots themselves are often interesting, even grotesque, rather than ornamental but it is fascinating to watch the speed at which they grow. Some species attain their full height of 40ft in six weeks!
Once established in the ground, bamboos are very resilient, low-maintenance plants. They are unfussy as to soil and most are very hardy. They can be grown in situations ranging from full sun to full shade, and are practically pest and disease free in the UK. They appreciate feeding and supplementary water but don’t need them, and established plants can survive periods of drought or flooding. Similarly, although they benefit from occasional tidying, they don’t require pruning.
Hopefully some of this has persuaded you to think about growing bamboos. However, there is no denying that some people have come to regret planting them, so it’s important to consider the possible drawbacks.
Bamboos are big plants, often bigger than people expect them to be. This is not helped by the tendency of garden makeover programmes to put 8ft specimen bamboos into a small space in people’s gardens as if they are going to stay that size. In fact they can gain height and width very rapidly. When a bamboo reaches maturity, it can send up culms twice as thick as the previous year’s and half as tall again. If you have a big garden it can be very exciting to see new, larger culms coming through. In a small garden, however, a running bamboo can quickly become a problem and whilst it is a myth that all bamboos eventually run, even a clump former can get too big for its space.
Which leads on to the second potential drawback. No one who has ever dug up an established bamboo has any wish to repeat the experience. Removing a running bamboo that has got out of control can be an expensive and time-consuming process, leaving aside the potential problems with angry neighbours.
The best thing to do is to buy a bamboo from a specialist nursery who will have a far wider range than the average garden centre and should be able to give you useful advice based on experience of growing these wonderful plants. Choose the right bamboo and site it carefully, and you will have a fabulous plant that will enhance any garden, and possibly the beginnings of a lifelong obsession.
Japonica Plants Nursery 