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This is the first thing to establish and it changes the answer to everything else. Two plants that look broadly similar behave in completely different ways, and only one of them is a problem.
The Test That Actually Works
Ignore the leaves, the height and the cane colour. Look at where this year's new canes have come up.
- Tight against the existing canes, so the whole plant is a dense clump with a clear edge — clumping
- Scattered, at a distance, in a line or a spray away from the base — running
A single cane a metre out on its own, with clear ground between it and the clump, settles the question. Clumping bamboo does not do that.
What Each One Does Underground
Clumping
Short, thick rhizomes that turn upward almost immediately. The plant widens by a few centimetres a year, from the outside of the existing base. After twenty years a clumping bamboo is a larger clump in the same place. It stays where it was planted and it is a perfectly reasonable garden plant.
Running
Long horizontal rhizomes that travel through the soil before sending anything up. The plant does not widen — it relocates, repeatedly, in whichever direction the going is easiest. This is the one that ends up in a lawn, under a fence and through a patio.
The Genera, Roughly
- Phyllostachys — running. The black, golden and yellow-groove bamboos sold in garden centres are mostly this. Handsome, vigorous, and the source of most of the problems we are called to
- Pleioblastus and Sasa — running, and low-growing, which makes them easy to underestimate. Sasa in particular spreads freely
- Fargesia — clumping. Umbrella and fountain bamboos. Well behaved and worth knowing about if you actually want bamboo
- Chusquea and Borinda — clumping
A plant label is not proof. Bamboo is regularly sold under a genus name that is wrong, or as an unnamed “bamboo”, and twenty-year-old plantings rarely come with a label at all. The behaviour of the plant in front of you is better evidence than anything written down.
Why It Changes the Job
Clumping bamboo that is simply too big can be dug out as a single unit, like any large shrub. It is a hole and a heavy lift rather than an excavation, and it does not come back.
Running bamboo is an area to be excavated, priced on its extent, with a follow-up season. Those two jobs are not remotely comparable in cost or in disruption, which is why nobody should be quoting for either without having established which one it is.
If You Want to Keep Bamboo
Plant a clumping variety, or put a running one inside a proper rhizome barrier from the outset — a heavy vertical membrane to sufficient depth, with the top edge left proud of the soil so any rhizome attempting to go over it can be seen and cut. A barrier installed at planting works. A barrier installed around an established spread does not.
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Ask Us About Your Own Garden
Send a photograph showing the base of the clump and the ground around it. That is usually enough for us to tell you which you have before anybody quotes anything.
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.