We were called on a consult — a bit late — to advise clients on bamboo that had traveled from a small grove next door onto their property: under their concrete driveway, across their lawn and gardens, and into their home. It seems the plant vampires do not need permission.
Crawling up the outside of the house, rhizomes that were meant to become culms rose from the ground, found no light, and simply went on acting like rhizomes — threading their way between the wall studs and into the first- and second-floor joists. Through the entire house.
The house had to come down. To save it would have cost more than the house was worth: removing the outer walls, the floors upstairs and down, interior walls, plumbing, and electrical — all of it colonized.
A barrier — the thing everyone thinks will stop bamboo from growing — would not have saved this house.
“The neighbor does not want to remove it.”
“The neighbor likes the bamboo.”
“The neighbor does not talk to me.”
Well, then. We have to make a plan — a plan that probably does not involve obstructions to the traveling habit of bamboo.
Perhaps, reading this, you have an issue with neighbor bamboo — a common phrase in Seattle, where bamboo loves the climate. All these climates. It almost rains enough here, though smart gardeners water their bamboo anyway — both because it thrives, and because happy bamboo is far less likely to travel.
Bamboo will grow under a home, into a crawlspace, and back out into the garden on the far side of the house.
No, bamboo will not break the concrete. But as you can see, it will find any joint where wood meets cement, and slip through. And then it is inside.
It did not ask for permission.
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