Projo Garden Blog

Timber bamboo like this won't get this big here in New England. The culm diameter will reach about 2.5 inches here.

We began our gardening adventure/life 27 years ago by selling herb plants, almost exclusively. One has to start somewhere and we loved the fact that herbs were plants with a purpose. They were grown to flavor foods, for teas, as home remedies, as household helpers. Sitting in an herb garden after a summer's rain has tickled the leaves into releasing their fragrant volatile oils is a lovely experience any gardener who grows them can attest to. So, herbs were the beginning of us, but not the end.

It's hard for a person who loves plants to keep that love focused and limited. As the gardeners (us) grew and changed, so did the gardens (and vice-versa). Our gardening journey has taken us on new roads, discovering new "favorite" plants, later replaced by newer favorites. And so we came to love bamboo.

Gardens and wild places have always been places of great peace and healing. For millennia human beings have gone to the garden to have their wounded and broken pieces soothed and healed. Any garden is soothing to the senses but the one that contains bamboo is special indeed.

Study the teachings of the pine tree, the bamboo, and the plum blossom. The pine is evergreen, firmly rooted, and venerable. The bamboo is strong, resilient, unbreakable. The plum blossom is hardy, fragrant, and elegant." -- Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969)

Ueshiba was history's greatest martial artist. He was the founder of Aikido, which can be translated as "The Art of Peace."

Notice that the stiffest tree is easily cracked while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind. -- Actor Bruce Lee

One unknown Chinese author suggests that the bamboo teaches the lesson that "failure is not falling down but refusing to get up."

THE MYTH ABOUT BAMBOO: Stick it in the ground and it will take over!

In truth, bamboo needs routine care and attention the first two to three years until the rhizome system becomes established, and is difficult to transplant. It will always respond to extra care, and the rewards can be stunning.

Each cane emerges from the ground at its mature thickness.

Bamboo will produce larger canes in height and diameter each year until it reaches its maximum potential, but the canes themselves never get thicker after emerging from the ground.

There are two main types of bamboo: Running -- yes, it really takes over if not contained -- and Clumping – yes, it's a well-behaved member of the garden family and does not have rhizomes, but spreads more like an ornamental grass similar to Miscanthus, Arundo, or Pennesetum.

Fargesia, a family of well-behaved clumping bamboo, have culms of smaller diameter but still provide all the benefits of a bamboo grove without invading the neighbors.

In general, the tallest bamboos hardy in our area are the running types. These tend to be the sun-tolerant varieties too. The true clumpers are the Fargesia family and with the exception of Fargesia rufa, are more happy in the shade.

There is talk of a new sun-tolerant Fargesia which is tall ( Fargesia rufa tops out at about 8 feet tall) coming to market soon. We reserve any judgment on this new variety until it's seen several New England seasonal cycles. As we all know, if the winter doesn't kill something, maybe the summer drought, the deer, the neighbor or the dog will!

TO BE CONTINUED

(Judy and Michel Marcellot own Seven Arrows Farm in South Attleboro.)

Comments

Sheila Lennon said:

Judy, I'm psyched.

Is it too late to plant bamboo this year? How many plants would I need to provide screening from a neighbor -- every 3 feet, or less? How expensive are young plants? How fast do they grow? (How many years before this neighbor's house becomes invisible?)

Link | August 14, 2007 2:51 PM
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Michel Marcellot said:

Sheila, It's not too late to plant bamboo. Usually I feel confident planting until the end of September. If I plant after Aug 15, I am careful too SUPER mulch the plants for winter. Sometime in late October (usually after a frost) I will pile on about a foot of organic matter - leaves, pine bark, shredded tree chips from the power company or tree service, what have you, right around the base of the culms. Make sure it can't get washed away during the winter too. Then remember to remove the mulch in late March, or after things thaw out in the spring.
About spread... Running types have an infinite spread, so be careful to contain them! I'll cover that in a subsequent blog entry. Clumping types are usually about as wide as they are tall. That means you can space them up to 8 feet apart. That's if you're willing to be patient. If you need screening faster than 2 - 3 years, invest in more plants and plant them closer together. Bamboo plants are a bit of a paradox in that they do spread well, yet they can take several seasons to gain their stride and really take off. I have seen groves really limp along for the first 4 years, and go ballistic the 5th year, almost doubling in culm size and spread in a single year. Others take off after 2 years, this all depends on the variety chosen, the site where it's planted, amount of water it gets, and the soil conditions.

Link | August 14, 2007 7:46 PM
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John Maxson said:

Where can one buy bamboo and what is the going price per culm? How deep should they be planted and can they tolerate lots of water? Thanks!

Link | August 16, 2007 7:31 AM
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Michel Marcellot said:

John: Bamboo is pricey by most plant standards, and not usually priced by the culm. All of ours are priced by the size container it's in, the variety (some are more difficult than others to propagate) and the age of the culms in it. A 2-gallon-size pot of Fargesia dracocephela for instance may sell for $78 and the same size Fargesia murielae may cost $108. There are several places online that sell bamboo, bamboogardens.com being one of the best. Look around and ask your local nursery. There is a company that's trying to introduce bamboo to a wider audience called Bamboo Select . You could check their web site for dealers in your area. Just be careful with the running types and place them wisely. They will really be aggressive. Of course we're big proponents of bamboo, having grown, sold, and propagated it it for over 17 years.

Link | August 16, 2007 8:40 AM
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