"edhead" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello all,

I've trawled through the archives and seen the usual scare stories
about and defenses of bamboo... and I'm still interested in planting
some.
snip
Speaking of barriers, if I understand it correctly, this is a strip
of plastic sheeting dug vertically into the ground around the proposed
bamboo area to stop the runners.

I'd only ever plant it in a pot above ground where it can be kept an eye on.
We had some in the front garden of our last house. Never again. It sent
runners 12 meters along a bed and under a 1 meter wide path. The path was
edged both sides with a wall of railway sleepers and the runners must have
gone down quite a way to get under them. I can't imagine a bit of plastic
would stop it for long. We had the lot dug out profesionally and I watched
them do it. It came right back - only this time spread over the wider area
that had been dug over. It came up through other ground cover plants which
made it next to impossible to kill off with weed killer.