IS BAMBOO EATING YOUR HOUSE?

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The first time I planted bamboo at our residence in the San Juan Islands, my neighbor ran over excitedly to warn me that it would attack her foundation (which BTW was over a hundred feet distant!) Not to worry… problem avoided in our temperate climate with long dry summers, and our “running” solution. How about where you live, is bamboo eating your house?

Bamboo is an amazing plant, classified as a grass.

Over-excited neighbor notwithstanding, we now feature twelve different varieties in our Pacific Northwest Island landscape. We grow both non-invasive clumping, and invasive running bamboo.  The bamboo has become a lush landscape and impressive screen in just 18 months. And that is with minimal watering in the summers from our drip systems. It is generally accepted that bamboo ‘sleeps the first year it is planted’, ‘creeps the second’, and ‘leaps the third’; however ours seems to do a slow-leap the first and a fast leap the second year. Water is the essence of life!

BEFORE IMAGE: February 2018 and the new “Fiber Pond” basic outline is in place. We have several varieties of bamboo planted around the pond.

AFTER IMAGE: Same view, in September 2019! If you look closely you’ll recognize some rocks and the chimney of the house.

When you see how fast bamboo can grow with just 30 minutes of drip irrigation every 3rd day during the dry season, you begin to understand why people are hesitant to grow bamboo; fearing it will run amok and eat into the foundations of their homes. It’s really only the running bamboo to fear however, and the trick we’ve learned in our landscapes is that it will ‘follow the drip’… it’s quite amenable, like a well-trained dog.

The Fiber Pond images above show a rain garden which filters storm water runoff from the Barn Gallery driveway; it’s great fun to watch when it rains cats and dogs! BTW: you may be wondering about the term “Fiber Pond”? That’s because the rocks came from a trench dug to install fiber optic cabling down the road. These are rocks we ‘diverted’ to our property for our landscaping project instead of their being dumped elsewhere…saving time and money for the fiber install company! Up-cycling at its best!

Clumping Bamboo

Even in December this clumping bamboo screens our house from the neighbors. This is Fargesia Robusta and does extremely well in the PNW. Over the years we’ve planted hundreds of feet of Robusta bamboo to create hedges, some even trimmed like English Privet, and others to create (when left untrimmed) tall thick screens. This fall we planted another sixty feet between our house and the Barn Gallery guest house, to replace three 23-year old Leland Cypress trees which had to be removed due to their invasive root system…talk about eating your foundation! (that’s another story!)

Clumping bamboo is much better behaved, and the roots grow outward, adding to the circle of roots every year. We’ve not found it to be invasive at all, even close to our drain field. And when you want to trim it back or transplant some or all of it, our tool of choice is the root assassin.

In November 2019 we planted this splindly screen of Bamboo

We planted the row of bamboo with small clumps of Fargesia Robusta bamboo, which we harvested from the bamboo behind the pergola in the previous image. This is a really flexible screening option as it can be pruned (canes removed every year), so it is more like a lacy curtain which blows elegantly in the breeze. Or if left on its own it will become an almost impenetrable screen between our own residence and the Barn Gallery guest house. Stay tuned!

Temple Bamboo

This temple bamboo screen is over 25′ high and is about 5 years old since planting. It almost completely obscures the Barn Gallery guest house from our rain catchment storage tank. It’s a running bamboo so it adds new shoots by running instead of clumping.

This is the stand of Temple Bamboo shown in the previous image, viewed from the other side There’s no inclination to attack the house foundation….instead it is heading downslope following the drip.

Waiting for the bamboo to fill in ?

You can always throw some poppy seeds into the landscaping design……this is the other side of the Fiber Pond just 5 months after the image at the top of this post. We actually love the poppies for summer color, and some years the deer don’t eat them all!

We created a bamboo hedge on either side of our driveway years ago.

The bamboo hedge is topped back in June every year and, because of our long dry summers, it needs little care after the June topping. It now requires very little watering after three years of having been on a drip system to help it get established. In very long dry summers I might put a hose on it a couple of times a year. This picture was taken about 3 months after the topping in June 2019, and some new top shoots are noticeable (maybe only to an English hedge aficionado).

No post on bamboo would be complete without an image of black bamboo.

I’ve seen the black get out of hand “running” up in Vancouver B.C., but we plant ours inside of, Corten steel collars and have never had any problems. And it remains one of the favorites of our guests.

The Fiber Pond on December 24th 2019.……we were so hoping to get a snow pic…… so stay tuned; winter is not over yet!

…… and we got it!