Foo - Thinking about planting this in my back yard...

http://bamboosourcery.com/images/PHHP.gif

Those trees aren't trees. They're a really cool species of bamboo. :) Anyone have any experience landscaping with bamboo?

Bamboo spreads big time.....make sure the variety you are planting is not one that will become wildly invasive or you will regret planting it.

this one looks nice too...

http://bamboosourcery.com/images/PHVR.gif

Bamboo is an incredibly invasive plant and very hard to control/eradicate. I would highly advise against planting it, unless it was in containers. BTW, I studied horticulture at Texas A&M and this is one of my few serious posts.

I love bamboo, especially the sounds of the winds rustling through the leaves. They need a lot of water and they grow very fast. I heard that they can sometimes damage the sidewalk if they're planted to close (roots lifting the concrete), but I haven't seen an evidence of this.

I have witnessed bamboo running under, growing through a black top road/drive. It varies some by species,

Bamboo takes over. I would not plant it anywhere.

Bamboo is an incredibly invasive plant and very hard to control/eradicate. I would highly advise against planting it, unless it was in containers. BTW, I studied horticulture at Texas A&M and this is one of my few serious posts.

+1 on containers only. You will regret it otherwise.

Yep, plant them far away from building foundations.

Wow - gotta serious post out of jsharr. Never thought I'd see the day. :)

I've been getting my info from this site:

http://bamboosourcery.com/

They have a section on the containment of bamboo.

Some species are very aggressive runners apparently. Some are "clumpers" and supposedly don't spread much at all?

I've always really liked bamboo. And the way my house/yard is laid out the neighbors look down into my house -even the windows in the bathrooms. I was hoping some strategic planting would give me a little privacy.

privacy is overrated.

My neighbors growing up had bamboo along the fence line between our yards. My parents still live there and the bamboo is still there. I don't know what they did to contain it but it never has come into our yard.

I'd avoid bamboo totally. I've seen people's back yards taken over by the stuff when the bamboo roots actually punch through the bottom of a container, go through the ground and start runners in all direction.

Yes, its a beautiful plant to look at, but it spreads fast, and almost impossible to contain once growing in the soil.

Bamboo is impossible to get out. I'll never forget the 4 full days we spent chopping my friends back yard down.

The pile of bamboo was about 6 feet tall, on a large tarp 25x25 wide.

His backyard was about 20x10 feet.... :eek:

Grows so thick and wide.

Ravenmore, not a bamboo expert by far, but I would look for a nursery with bamboo experience to reccomend some non invasive species for the Austin area. The local Extension service office might also be of help here. There are root barriers that can be installed to help in containment, but this can be quite expensive and not guaranteed to work. If you are looking for privacy screening, I would look at red tip photinia and some of the ligustrums as options. Very fast growing evergreen shrubs or small trees. The photinia has nice red new growth in spring and fall.

This looks like a decent site to check out

http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/growgreen/

I would think as green as Austin is, that you should have plenty of well stocked, well staffed nursery centers.

Ravenmore, not a bamboo expert by far, but I would look for a nursery with bamboo experience to reccomend some non invasive species for the Austin area. The local Extension service office might also be of help here. There are root barriers that can be installed to help in containment, but this can be quite expensive and not guaranteed to work. If you are looking for privacy screening, I would look at red tip photinia and some of the ligustrums as options. Very fast growing evergreen shrubs or small trees. The photinia has nice red new growth in spring and fall.

Those would be good plants for the TX area. If you need thicker coverage, let me know, I'll be glad to ship you some kudzu...it's another plant that was imported and planted...grows all over the freaking place now.

Also, you'd probably end up with a few of these guys living in your backyard...

http://www.terragalleria.com/images/china/chin5287.jpeg

Thanks jsharr - I'll look around for nurserys and landscapers that work with it. It's pretty common in the Austin area although most of the ones I've seen here have small culms and don't grow very tall. This is TX after all and is probably not an ideal environment for most species. Probably not even as good for it as California. ;)

I've never had a green thumb or been much into plants, but I've always been fascinated by bamboo since I was a kid. I'd really like to try some if there is a responsible way to do it.

You want to to plant an invasive plant in ATX, good luck. Why not just grow something native? Like Scrub Oaks or Cedar:p...that way the city's "enviromental police" don't come knocking.

I was thinking - it would give your dogs something to chew on.....

My wifes grandpa uses it as a privacy fence. The stuff grows fast and gets out of control pretty quick, but makes a great privacy fence.

Raven - you will want to place a 6 inch heavy plastic border control around the area where you plant the bamboo to keep it contained - that is 6 inches down into the soil around it. That, and water will stop it from spreading...

We have some in our yard - the birds love it, it makes a great screen & wonderful noises.... BUT, thinking we really didn't need a border block UNDER the building, we skipped that. Now we mow the stuff down where it popped out 25 feet on the other side of the guest-house!

It may take a few years to really get going, but that is because it is busy building its root system before it gets into verticle growth mode.

So, it's really cool stuff, but you've been warned!!

The problem with bamboo, and even the plants that I recommended seriously, is that they are not native to the area and highly invasive. If planted and left to their own, they can and will take over the native species. This is a huge problem all over the US. Non native plants take over and the eco system gets out of whack as sources of food for native animals are killed off.

If you do not enjoy gardening, planting any aggressive growing plant could be bad news.

You might want to consult with a landscape architect to come up with creative non living screening methods to use instead of or in conjunction with greenscaping.

Okay, all this serious talk is freaking me out, I need to go have some beef jerky pie with quail ice cream now.

Okay, all this serious talk is freaking me out, I need to go have some beef jerky pie with quail ice cream now.

How about we take this over to the frame builders area to weigh the pro's and con's of building your own BamBoo bike from bamboo you grew yourself? :D

actually I think the species in the first photo is the one they use for building bamboo bikes. :D

That's also the one I like the best. :)

Phyllostachys nigra (black bamboo) is the species I used. Tonkin is another I've seen made into a bike; it's also used for fly rods. You have to let it grow for four years before it can be made into a bike.

How about we take this over to the frame builders area to weigh the pro's and con's of building your own BamBoo bike from bamboo you grew yourself? :D

Home grown, good stuff.

Or how about I take and plant some bamboo on the California State Park that is my neighbor. :)

They have this nice little swampy area that would be a great place to plant some of this. Maybe I'll even plant some horseradish at the same time, after all it can't be any worse than Pampas Grass. ;(

:)

Steven

wheew! just got finished kicking over unwanted bamboo shoots....

I have to admit, on the 14 + hour drive from Nebraska yesterday how ironic it was worrying about planting a highly aggressive non-native plant species in the middle of a lawn already populated with Bermuda and St. Augustine. :)

I have to admit, on the 14 + hour drive from Nebraska yesterday how ironic it was worrying about planting a highly aggressive non-native plant species in the middle of a lawn already populated with Bermuda and St. Augustine. :)

Doh!
http://smilieshq.com/smilies/rolleye0018.gif (http://www.smilieshq.com)

maybe you should just roughscape with rocks and sand and stuff.

maybe you should just roughscape with rocks and sand and stuff.

peyote! Plant lots and lots of it. Then you can harvest the buttons and sell them to teenagers.:D
Pretty soon, your whole house will be paid for.

Ihave to admit, on the 14 + hour drive from Nebraska yesterday how ironic it was worrying about planting a highly aggressive non-native plant species in the middle of a lawn already populated with Bermuda and St. Augustine. :)

The most boring drive in the whole wide world, there is nothing to see.

Man - the last couple of hours of that drive were a death march. Hitting the TX border at 9 to 10pm or so, and realizing we had another 4 hours was just brutal.

I think I'm going to go ahead with this and try to contain it as much as possible. I mean its in the middle of suburbia. I'm not sure how many native species there are left within a few square miles that aren't considered weeds. Dandelions - freakin' dandelions are considered weeds. Yet they're native, kinda pretty and honest to gawd edible. People use them in salad for cryin' out loud. Yet we've got poisons and toxins we dump on our lawns to get rid of them... Just so we can protect our nice pretty water sucking bermuda lawns and keep them worry free eh? ;) :D

I think mankind has a screwed up sense of environment and trying to keep it static. I think sometimes that is counter to the perfect nature of things. Environments are always changing, whether we have stuff to do with it or not. Just when we get involved the change tends to happen a bit quicker it seems.

I've watched some home make over/back yard challenges that had to deal with invasive bamboo - by ripping it out and actually installing metal (something that doesn't rust) deep into the ground to separate their lot from the neighbors (who just let the stuff grow). They went to a lot of trouble to beat the stuff down. Perhaps asking the local plant peeps about it - how, if you decide to add it to your yard, can you control it. I'm sure there's some contraption out there.

Me - I love grasses. I helped plant the ex's garden and it was a big walk through garden with field stone walkways (and field stone walls) and the many different types of grasses planted - some tall, some short - different colors, etc - many of the big ones grew big enough so they brushed you when you passed - pretty cool.

I've spent far more time in the DFW area than I really cared to. I can honestly state that the entire area could benefit from a bamboo invasion. Anything to add interest to the open flatness and the dull brown buffalo grass.

Might be fun to plant the stuff in Georgia and the Carolinas to see if it can't crowd out the kudzu.

There are species that grow around here that aren't anywhere near as invasive as what I've seen described. Heck, I've been in jungles in the Philippines that had bamboo that wasn't as bad as some of you have described.

Actually in my reading I think I've seen it mentioned that there are species of bamboo indigenous to N. America. I might see if I can read up on that.

My neighbors growing up had the stuff as I mentioned lining the fence line. We never had it come into our yard, so I wonder what steps they took.

In my "research" on this I've read that bamboo produces more oxygen than any other plant and absorbs a high amount of CO2. If that's true it would make it an excellent greenhouse gas/global warming fighter.

maybe you should just roughscape with rocks and sand and stuff.

actually jsharr with the dogs I've thought about that more than you know. :)

Contact your local Texas Master Gardeners. They have all sorts of great info. I live next to one which is nice because she is an expert on all things being grown. On the other hand, I have to work my butt off to keep my yard from looking bad compared to hers. Off hand, something like a row of leyland cypress trees might work for your barrier but they do not grow as quick as bamboo.

A Texas Certified Nurseryman has replied several times in this thread.

A Texas Certified Nurseryman has replied several times in this thread.

who dat? :)

A Certifiable Texan has replied several times in this thread.

fixed

I've spent far more time in the DFW area than I really cared to. I can honestly state that the entire area could benefit from a bamboo invasion. Anything to add interest to the open flatness and the dull brown buffalo grass.

Might be fun to plant the stuff in Georgia and the Carolinas to see if it can't crowd out the kudzu.

There are species that grow around here that aren't anywhere near as invasive as what I've seen described. Heck, I've been in jungles in the Philippines that had bamboo that wasn't as bad as some of you have described.

You have not visited the right areas of DFW. My neighborhood is full of rollng hills, century old oaks of many species and pecans, is bisected by several creeks, has a waterfall and limestone cliffs. Wildlife is abundant. I see squirrells, rabblits, owls, hawks, raccoons, possums, armadillos, and so many species of birds, including ducks, egrets, woodpeckers, jays, etc.

Flatland can be found anywhere, as can beauty.

Please PM me next time you plan to visit. Come over for dinner and a walk in the woods, or if you ride a 56 or a 58, I can hook you up with a bike.

who dat? :)
:rolleyes::mad::D

A Texas Certified Nurseryman has replied several times in this thread.

Nurseryman, go back to your Nursery and Nurse something. :)

Nurseryman, go back to your Nursery and Nurse something. :)

I grow special ivy for you!!!!

I grow special ivy for you!!!!

Thank you, your so kind. I take back all the mean and ugly things I said about you.

Please don't.