I've been bamboozled!!!

I'll start off by saying that I've been addicted to bamboo for several years. It's amazingly beautiful, fast growing, and creates a calming sound when wind passes through the leaves.

My favorites are black bamboo, Bory Leopard & Giant Timber bamboo. These are all runners which spread rapidly and have given the plant a bad reputation as being invasive. Don't get me wrong, bamboo can be invasive if the correct measures aren't taken which is containment, containment, containment.

I've planted bamboo at three homes. Twice in the ground and once in raised beds. A word of advice, the raised bed method is the easier method (especially depending on soil type) since the bamboo is in an elevated planter box & it's a lot easier going up then digging down into soil 24+ inches to install 20+ mil plastic barrier, which is the alternative method of containment.

What a complete pain it is to install this barrier. I'm not getting any younger & shoveling and digging into our hard clay soil has definitely wrecked my back!!! At our current home, I was feeling especially ambitious and planted twelve 15 gallon containers of bamboo!

I managed to install this barrier around three bamboo plantings & then gave up. My mistake was in waiting a good year to have the two 15 foot sections of bamboo contained with the barrier. I hired this job out which was money well spent (especially since it was a birthday gift from my generous spouse who was concerned about our bamboo migrating to our neighbors yards).

It did manage to break free prior to containment and travel to one neighbors yard which I did eradicate.

We've been now living the good life for a couple of years, confident that our containment systems have been keeping our bamboo in line. Or so we thought.....

Last week, low and behold we're doing another yard project, replacing a magnolia tree that has never quite thrived in it's current location (perhaps the clay soil has been retaining too much water?) with a lemon tree which tend to be fairly hardy. As I'm digging down, I locate a fairly substantial tangle of bamboo roots which have wrapped around the perimeter of the magnolia plant roots!!!!! Yikes!!! Is this is a fluke or has my black bamboo, which is planted about twenty feet from the magnolia tree, broken free of it's barrier?


Oh Lucy, you have some esplainin' to do!!! I followed the instructions carefully as provided by my bamboo resource when installing the barrier. Please, please tell me it's a fluke; an errant hardy runner, for my back can't take any more digging in this impossibly hard clay.

All I can say is I've been bamboozled. Lured in by the beauty of bamboo and the promises made by the nursery. For now on, it's either raised beds for new plantings or sticking with the clumpers which don't need containment.

For now, it's going to be a cross my fingers approach and periodic checking of the liners. I'm hopeful that this was a fluke since the roots seemed to be brittle & dried out.

Meanwhile, as can be seen from the before and after photos, the bamboo has been doing a beautiful job of growing vigorously and screening out the neighboring house which looks into our yard.