Bamboo. It's a love and hate relationship. I love how it looks, I love how it can provide a screen, like what we have along the creek that pretty much keeps deer out of our potted things for sale. I love the sound the leaves make in the breeze. I love how it provides shelter for wildlife. But, and this is a big but, I absolutely hate how it is so invasive. And I hate how it dies after it blooms. We had several lovely clumps/areas of a tiny bamboo along a path, bothering nothing and no one and then it bloomed, and died. If you don't know about that phenomenon, look it up. It's kind of fascinating how all of one species in many different areas will bloom at the same time and all die.
So, what bamboo do I like, or in this case, absolutely love? Sasa veitchii would be the one. It is showy, well behaved and tolerant of even the coldest winters we have here, surviving 20 below zero temperatures. It might complain a bit, but it survives. It is a shade lover and we have it growing at the top of a bank, under the chestnut trees at the edge of the back gardens. It is more showy in the winter, which is another plus. Maybe I should bring a bit of it down closer to the house to enjoy out the window when the weather gets too nasty to take my long afternoon walks.
No comments:
Post a Comment