Controlling your garden bamboo

Even though I love bamboo as a plant, garden screen and an environmentally responsible raw material, the strength and tenacity of this plant can also be its downfall if it’s in your garden and you do not wish to harvest your bamboo for mass textile production for products such as linens and towels.

Controlling your garden bamboo

While bamboos are usually a good, ornamental plant, here are some of the problems encountered and if grown without caution, can become problematic and take over your patch:

Bamboo shoots may pop up anywhere in the garden: neighbouring land or even through solid barriers, such as in patios and conservatory floors. Most weed-suppressant groundcover fabrics will not stop bamboo spreading

The problem tends to be with the invasive types of bamboo. These bamboos spread via long rhizomes, which help the plant to colonise new areas

The clump forming bamboos can also grow out of control, but do not tend to spread as much as the running bamboos

Digging

Non-chemical methods involve digging out clumps of bamboo and restricting the size. This can be difficult with very large plants, or on heavy soil. Use a sharp spade to dig up the entire clump or to remove sections from the edge of the clump that have grown beyond the limits. Sever the rhizomes as you go, lifting and removing them with a fork or trowel. If you wish to keep the plant, consider planting it inside a physical barrier like a pot or raised bed.

Chemical control

You can use a weed killer to remove unwanted growth, or the whole plant. The larger the plant, the more difficult it will be to completely kill it, and it may take several applications of weed killer to succeed

Removing the whole plant

With very tall bamboos, which can be difficult to spray, cut down canes to soil level in late winter and then apply a suitable to the young growth in late spring and early summer. Several treatments may be needed

Alternatively, cut canes to ground and treat with a stump and root killer. Treat foliage of any regrowth as soon as possible.

Respect your bamboo… it has a mind of it’s own.