Home › Advice Centre › Bamboo Removal
There are two timescales and they get confused. There is the time on site, which is usually short, and the time until the matter is genuinely finished, which is longer.
On Site
- A small clump, open ground, machine access — half a day
- A typical established garden spread of ten to twenty square metres — one day
- The same area with hand digging only, because nothing can get through the gate — two days, sometimes three
- Spread under paving, decking or a lawn that has to be lifted and relaid — two days or more, with most of that time on the lifting and relaying rather than the bamboo
- A long boundary run with a barrier going in — two to three days, depending on the length
What Makes It Slower Than It Looks
Almost always one of three things, and none of them is the bamboo:
- Hand digging. A machine does in an hour what takes a day with a fork. Access decides this and nothing else does
- Something over the top. Lifting a patio, taking a fence out and putting it back, saving planting out of a border
- Discovering the extent is larger than it looked. Which is why we walk it out before quoting rather than after
The Follow-Up Season
This is the part that is not really about time on site. After any excavation, a small number of shoots may appear through the following growing season from fragments that were missed.
Dealing with those is quick — minutes, not hours — but it happens over months rather than in one visit. A removal that has not been through a spring is not yet a removal that has been proved.
Which is why timing the work matters. A removal carried out in autumn or winter goes into its test season immediately, and by the following summer you know where you stand. A removal in late summer waits the best part of a year before anything can be confirmed.
When You Can Use the Ground Again
- Backfilled and levelled — the same day
- Planting — straight away, into clean imported soil, though the shoots are easier to spot in bare ground
- Turf — possible immediately; better after a growing season, for the reasons above
- Paving, a base or a building — wait a season, and be certain. Bamboo coming up through a new patio is the one outcome that cannot be tidied away
The Comparison Worth Making
A day on site and a season of occasional attention is the whole cost of dealing with it. Cutting it back instead is half a day every single year, for as long as you own the house, with the area increasing throughout. Put side by side, the removal is the cheaper option within about three years.
View our Hertfordshire Bamboo Removal service →
More Bamboo Removal Advice
Visit the Tree Masters Hertfordshire Advice Centre →
Ask Us About Your Own Garden
Tell us the area the bamboo covers and whether a machine can reach it. Those two answers give you the timescale.
Tell us what needs doing across Hertfordshire and we will quote for the work. Call 07388 094829, message us on WhatsApp or use the form below.