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Fargesia Bamboo
GardenerSuze
Posts: 5,692
in Plants
Fargesia is classified as a clumping Bamboo but it would seem gardeners are becoming more nervous about growing it as home surveyors are concerned at the mere sight of it.
Perhaps surveyors have every right to be nervous or do they need to be better educated? Climate change is affecting the growth of some plants and running bamboo seems to be enjoying growth in the UK a little too well. If you don't grow it would you be happy planting Fargesia?
Should it come with a warning that it must be maintained even although it is a clumping form.
I would welcome your thoughts.
Perhaps surveyors have every right to be nervous or do they need to be better educated? Climate change is affecting the growth of some plants and running bamboo seems to be enjoying growth in the UK a little too well. If you don't grow it would you be happy planting Fargesia?
Should it come with a warning that it must be maintained even although it is a clumping form.
I would welcome your thoughts.
I have worked as a Gardener for 24 years. My latest garden is a new build garden on heavy clay.
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To be fair to suppliers, just pitting a warning on the plant label won't always make a difference to how someone grows a plant. There is a limit to how much info can be given - much the same on food products - and people don;t always have the time to read a lot of small print.
Many GC's can't even be bothered to warn customers about the unsuitability of many of the plants they sell as "house" plants.
I suppose like anything else you buy, doing some research beforehand lies with the customer.
I suppose if/when something gets out of hand, we just get more of them on here asking how to get rid of, or control, it
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Three years later, loads of shoots were coming up through the lawn, and in one spot it broke through some concrete. We dug it up and put a barrier around the roots, it sulked for a year but all is good now.
Interestingly, there is a Fargesia elsewhere in the garden that has never run (but we still put a barrier around it).
It’s not only surveyors that need educating but the general public, nurseries that falsely sell runners such as phyllostachys as clumpers and clearly so called ‘bamboo experts’ too! A problem occurs when people jam them in too-small spaces or close to neighbouring fences and expect them to remain small without any management or awareness of ultimate spread.
For example, the RHS says F. rufa has an eventual spread of 1.5m in 20 years and with it’s arching habit ideally needs a space 2m2 to do it justice. It can get larger still in a warm, moist climate so there is a concern that these dimensions may have to be uprated in time. Does that make it invasive? No. Can it run? No. It is just potentially a very large plant unsuited to small urban gardens.
Although they can build large, dense clumps that can exert pressure on fences and patios in the wrong place, clumpers have an entirely different morphology and very short rhizome root system (pachymorph) in contrast to an actual running bamboo (leptomorph) that will always have the capability of running even if it behaves itself for many years.
Genuine clumpers such as fargesia are physically and genetically incapable of ‘running’, so @Athelas you must’ve been sold a mislabelled runner.
@Fairygirl It has been suggested that either I cut it down??? or remove, it if we move. So it will be coming with me in a pot.
@Plantminded I think a spade to cut through the roots annually would be enough to have some control, although still needs monitoring. You may recall I purchased Fargesia Jiuzhaigou 1 a year ago. It looking lovely .
@Athelas Love your garden. Were you given the full names of your plants, landscapers often supply a plant list. You could just check that yours is not a runner. I believe the roots do look different.
@Nollie Yes with a warmer moist climate, I understand that the very popular Nigra could become a problem.
https://bamboosourcery.com/project/runners-vs-clumpers/
I don’t know if any of the species of the ‘open clumper’ types are available in Europe, but an interesting intermediate version.
It’s possible it wasn’t a Fargesia — as @Nollie said it could have been mislabelled. Here’s the planting list, there are two bamboo plants listed (you can see a bit of the leaves of the other bamboo, on the right side of the photo of my garden above), but I can’t tell which one is the rufa and which one is the murielae — and it’s likely one of them isn’t even a Fargesia…