Advice on bamboo - please help

Hi,

First time poster and absolute beginner in the garden so please bear with me.

Is it a bad idea to plant running bamboo in a small London garden bordered by neighbours on all sides? Or is it manageable given regular root maintenance / chopping?

I'm asking because our local garden centre planted this for us and now 2 years later, I think its about to become unmanageable. I can just about handle the constant new canes growing ten feet every week. I can't handle the rhizomes which are now tunneling under my artificial lawn (don't judge me please!) and shed and god knows what else in my neighbour's gardens.

I'm pretty annoyed because it was pretty expensive and not knowing anything about these things, I didn't realize a) that you might need a barrier (which the centre now tells me we wouldn't have had space for in the bed measuring 60cm x 375cm) and b) that there's clumping bamboo which wouldn't have caused this concern.

The garden centre says it just needs management and pruning. I think it's beyond me with the time I have available and I can't afford to pay a gardener to do it twice a year - besides I think it's a risk we'll miss a rhizome and then my neighbour will have a problem. I think that's irresponsible when you're living so close.

In short what I'm asking is:

- am I making a big deal out of this and is it perfectly manageable?

- every single thing I read online (and another well known garden centre that I called) says you should never plant running bamboo in a small urban garden - so my view is, it should all be taken out - am I being overcautious?

-if I take it out, what could I put in its place? I need (i) height (about 6.5-8ft), (ii) something to soften the fence all year round and (iii) needs to fit in a narrow bed (60cm).

Thanks for your help.

 

Personally i would take it out because of how invasive they can be.

Hopefully more people will have more advice for you :-)

Oh and welcome :-)

 

Oh get rid of it now - Next door had one of those & after a few years of trying to control it Ive resorted to chemical warfare this year:

--
But Ive still got clumps coming up in the veg patch & in the greenhouse the other side of the lawn to deal with...

Nasty thing - should be banned IMHO.

 

Bamboo can be an absolute menace in the wrong place. I think you have it in the wrong place
My advice would be to remove it as soon as you can before it gets to the stage where it becomes impossible to control.
http://www.fujiyamagarden.com/page16d.html

 

Thank you all for the replies. I think that settles it.

But does anyone know what I could replace it with? What gives height and is evergreen and fits in a narrow bed?

 

You could put up some trellises and grow ever green climbers up them and then plant the bottom of the bed with some other plants

 

There are some bamboo that don't run.

You could replace it with a Fargesia (most garden centres have them) or a
Borinda (more difficult to find but specialist nurseries have them)

They will form clumps and not get out of control.
Still give you height for some privacey

 

Thanks All. I think now I have the chance to start again I'll go with something that doesn't drop its leaves so much.

I'm thinking:
-fern pine
-Spartan juniper
- bay laurel
-olive tree

Question is whether these will work in a narrow bed of 60 cm.