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Bamboo is priced differently from almost everything else in a garden, because what is being bought is the removal of an area of ground rather than the removal of a plant.
Area, Not Canes
The clump you can see may be two metres across. If rhizome has run eight metres down a fence line and into a border, the job is the eight metres. Two gardens with identical-looking clumps can be completely different quotations on that basis alone.
This is why we walk the spread before pricing, and why a photograph taken from the furthest cane back towards the clump is the single most useful thing you can send.
What Is Over the Top
Open border or lawn is the straightforward version. Everything else adds:
- Under a lawn — the turf has to come up and the area needs making good afterwards
- Under paving, decking or gravel — lifting, storing and relaying, or writing it off. This is frequently the largest single element of a bamboo job
- Through a border with planting worth keeping — slow and careful, lifting and heeling in what is being saved
- Against a fence or a wall — hand work close to the structure, and sometimes the fence has to come out and go back
- Under or beside a shed or outbuilding — often the point at which a full removal becomes a removal plus a barrier
Access, as Always
Bamboo removal produces two flows of material: the cut canes going out, and a substantial volume of rhizome and soil going out after them. Both have to reach a vehicle.
Where a machine can reach the area, the dig is quick. Where it cannot and the whole excavation is by hand, the same area is several times the labour. The width of the narrowest access point is therefore worth measuring before you enquire.
What Reduces It
- Dealing with it early. A three-year-old clump that has run two metres is a fraction of the same plant after fifteen years
- Combining it with other work. If the ground is being cleared or turfed anyway, the excavation overlaps with work that was happening
- Accepting a barrier where full removal is impractical, rather than paying to lift a patio that is staying anyway
- Keeping the spoil on site where there is somewhere sensible for it — though the rhizome itself always leaves
Be wary of a quotation that looks cheap for bamboo. The usual reason is that it prices cutting the canes and skimming the obvious clump rather than excavating the area. That work looks finished for about four months.
The Follow-Up
A thorough excavation still leaves the possibility of a few shoots from fragments in the first season. Ask whether that is included. We would rather deal with a handful of shoots in the spring than have somebody conclude the job did not work.
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Ask Us About Your Own Garden
Walk out to the furthest cane you can find and photograph from there back towards the clump. That one picture tells us more than any description.
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.