Bamboo

Ever since I lived in Belize, decades ago, I have liked bamboo in all its various forms. I like the short and skinny types which are most common in British gardens, only a centimeter or so wide and a few feet high. I like the stave-widthed varieties often grown in the mediterranean countries, & I love the giants of the tropics, with stems as thick as a fat girl's thigh and higher than a house. I like the simplicity of bamboo's single-stalked structure, the grace of their spear-shaped leaves, their movement on the wind and the noises they create. Bamboo is musical. When the wind is gentle, it rustles softly. When the wind is strong, it can roar. And when bent by a gale, bamboo creaks and groans in agony - but it never breaks. It's resilient, as well.

A few years ago, Moonface gave me a small pot-plant with a small hardy variety of bamboo. It started as only half a dozen stems each less than a fot high. After a couple of years, it was a thick bush that was outgrowing the pot, so I planted it at the top or the garden, where it flourished. I watched as it spread and flourished,sending out suckers and new stems a foot or so away from the parent clump. The stems which finally struggled to grow a couple of feet high in the pot, suddenly managed to grow to four or five feet in a thick clump at the top of the garden.


And then, one spring, it turned into an enemy. One of my pleasures is walking barefoot in the garden. I like wriggling my toes in the grass, feeling the resistance of the soil and the freshness of dew; the way it dampens and cools my feet. But when bamboo sends its suckers out underground to start new stands, those suckers poke up from the grass like spikes. They hurt ! Each new stem starts like a sharpened pencil, sticking half-an-inch or so out of the soil. When you walk on them, they can draw blood. And they hurt! The spikes can be up to six feet from the parent clump, and thus they turn a large area of garden into a no-go area.

So, in spite of the aesthetic qualities of the plant, I reluctantly decided that it had to go.

Uprooting the clump of bamboo took a long time. The roots and suckers were both deep and extensive. And it didn't die easily. Even after three or four years, we still find the odd stem of bamboo, sliding carefully up amongst other plants, disguising itself within a different bush. It knows that it's not wanted any more, so it's hiding. But we will eradicate it all eventually. I will miss it. I still like bamboo's appearance and sound, but not at the expense of holes in my feet.