Bamboo advice!
 

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the site and wondered if I could pick your bamboo brains!

We've just moved to our first house and we're trying to figure out what to do with the garden. It's mostly paved with small slate tiles. It's quite small (mid terrace house) and we want it to feel secluded.

We've got a waist/shoulder high brick wall on one side, with two gaps about a metre apart and 30cm square which used to hold a jasmine bush and some ivy. These are now gone and we really wanted to put some bamboo in there to create a nice green screen and get some foliage in the garden.

Would anyone be able to recommend a good species to plant there? We'd like to have a tall-ish growing species (up to 2.5m ideally) and some smaller ones of varying heights around it in pots.

Would I need to put a root barrier down? I don't want the bamboo spreading under the tiles and pushing them up out of place....

Many thanks for all your help!

Dizzy sparkle

Assuming you are in UK from your wording.

For 30cm square gaps in paving, don't want them pushing up the tiles, you will have to line the holes with a barrier, as even the tightest of clumpers isn't going to confine itself to such a small space for ever.

2.5m isn't tall-ish, it's small-ish, for bamboo, once its been going for 5 years. I would recommend Fargesia murieliae "Simba", which is a true clumping bamboo happy in a smallish space, and grows to pretty much exactly 2.5m after a few years. Some other members of the Fargesia family would be good too. Perhaps have a look around the website of good value bamboo mail-order supplier Jungle Giants, which does a good range of Fargesias at reasonable prices.

If you want yellow culms (not found in Fargesia family), then Semiarundinaria yashadake "Kimmei" will tolerate a confined space, but expect a height more like 1.5-2m. Also, although in general Phyllostachys bamboos don't like a confined space, P. aurea is more tolerant than most in the climate found in most parts of the UK - I've had some unconfined in the ground for several years and the clump is still barely 20cm across - and there are some yellow cultivars such as Koi and Holochrysa. Stay away from anything with any pretension to being big.

This is a good site for advice on container cultivation of bamboos. http://www.mjbanks.co.uk/homepage.htm In general, container cultivation is less than ideal, because they are thirsty and inclined to fill the container with roots, and so need splitting and replanting every 2 or 3 years, once they have got going.

Well, great work! You have helped me to improve my knowledge about this field. Thank you so much for sharing.

Dizzy, If you forgo the barrier then I suggest you go with a bamboo that has small rhizomes or the bamboo will definetly push up the tiles. Psuedosasa Japonica has small rhizomes for me in zone 6 and will get about 6-10 ft tall. With varying heights and does great in pots so this might be the ideal bamboo for you. There are many others some fargesias do well in pots. Good Luck and keep me posted. Bambooman