First Frosts at Scottish Bamboo

Sunday night (4th October) saw the first frost of the season here at Scottish Bamboo. We recorded -1.3 degrees C.

Tips for keeping your bamboo plants looking good over the winter:

1) If your bamboo plants are in containers try to keep under cover during frosty nights as the pots will freeze quicker than plants in the ground.

2) Don't let containerised bamboo dry out in the winter months, make sure the soil is moist at all times (remember the winds can be very drying).

3) Give your bamboo plants in the ground a good mulch to keep moist and protect the roots (organic matter - bark, compost or leaf mulch)

Planting a Bamboo Landscape

If your looking to plant a Bamboo Landscape a great tip to achieve the ultimate Bamboo Grove is to plant your area in groups of three plants. Plant each bamboo approx 1 - 2m apart & you'll be sure to achieve a sizeable clump in approx 2 years.

Our favourite plants to use for forming a grove are Chimonobambusa Tumidissinoda, Phyllostachys Glauca, Phyllostachys Vivax, Phyllostachys Vivax Aureocaulis, Phyllostachys Vivax Huagwenzhu & Phyllostachys Nigra Punctata.

The same can be achieved with many other bamboo plants such as any of the Fargesia varieties for dense clumps or any of the Sasa varieties for ground cover.

Why not check out our Planting Guide for a reminder on the best way to establish new bamboo plants.

Bamboo Hedging

Bamboo is a great option for creating a privacy screen or hedge in your garden. In fact, most bamboo will work well as a hedge or screen, and your choice of which variety to use really depends on your personal requirements such as desired height, density, garden / location and conditions of the site (i.e. coastal, windy, sunny, shaded).

Here at Scottish Bamboo our most popular hedging choices are:

1) Phyllostachys Bisettii - creates a very hardy dense dark green hedge, quick to mature, vigorous growth.
2) Phyllostachys Aurea - a lovely bright and ornamental screen with golden green culms.
3) Fargesia Robusta - a stately bamboo with colourful qualities, quick growing, well behaved and robust as the name suggests.
4) Pseudosasa Japonica - a broad-leaved bamboo creating a tropical feeling screen. Plentiful foliage making a dense and tough bamboo screen.
5) Fargesia Dracocephala - a nice short-medium height bamboo for screening commonly known as the hardy dragon bamboo.

Visit Scottish Bamboo today for lots more bamboo hedging ideas.

Bamboo Shooting

Every year brings the anticipation of which bamboo is going to shoot first.

This year the winner is Fargesia Rufa. Last year it was Fargesia Murielae. What makes bamboo plants shoot in a different sequence each year & why do they shoot at different times depending on your geography in the UK?

Caring for your Bamboo Plants

Growing Bamboo: Some Key Points
· Most bamboos prefer full sun and a soil pH of around 6.0 - 6.2.
· Newly planted bamboo requires liberal watering.
· Lack of water is the biggest problem with growing bamboo.
· Bamboos require water to send out new culms.
· Standing water inhibits the growth of bamboo.
· Bamboo doesn't like competition from weeds.
· Taller bamboo should be staked, to prevent uprooting.
· Bamboos are evergreen and will lose and replace leaves as they grow.
· Since bamboos are grasses and are grown for their foliage. Feed with a high nitrogen fertilizer. Mulching will help control moisture and will protect cold hardy varieties in winter.

Using bamboo in your garden

There are many ways to use bamboo in your garden design. It can be used as a hedge or screen to provide privacy from your neighbors, in containers for your terrace or patio or as means of creating your own secret bamboo forest to wander through. It mixes well with both perennials and annuals and can be used as a tall or medium background plant, an accent plant or as a low border or ground cover plant depending upon the variety you choose.

An interesting fact about bamboo is that the main stems (referred to as culms or canes) emerge from the ground in the diameter that they will always be. And, the next season’s new culms usually emerge wider in diameter and grow to be taller than the older canes. Therefore, the youngest canes in your planting are the thickest and tallest.

Bamboo comes in a variety of heights and can be trimmed from the top if it gets too tall. Generally speaking the larger bamboos like yellow groove prefer several hours a day of direct sunlight, while the smaller bamboos (under 20 feet tall), can tolerate partly shady conditions.

When using bamboo as a screen or hedge you want to treat the whole area by laying down good compost or manure, so when it spreads it travels into good soil. When planting very tall and slender bamboos, they may need to be staked to prevent wind from uprooting them or damaging newly formed roots. Generally, smaller bamboo do not need to be staked because the rootball is big enough to support the plant. Generally speaking, after five years under good growing conditions, a single planting will yield 30 to 40 culms, 3/4 inches in diameter and up to 20 feet high (dependent upon which variety you choose.)

See www.scottishbamboo.com for over 40 varieties of hardy bamboo ideal for the cooler UK climate.

New Bamboo Stock now available

We're very excited to let all you bamboo lovers out there know about our new stock now available on the webiste.

The newly listed stock includes the following varieties - Phyllostachys Glauca, Phyllostachys Viridiglaucescens, Phyllostachys Vivax, Fargesia Rufa, Fargesia Robusta, Phyllostachys Aureosulcata 'Spectabilis', Fargesia Juizhaigou, Fargesia Dracocephala, Chimonobambusa Quadrangularis and Hibanobambusa Tranquillans Shiroshima. All these bamboo plants are fully hardy and very well suited to the UK cold climate - we're in North East Scotland, so if they survive and thrive here, they will anywhere in the UK!

Please visit the website www.scottishbamboo.com to view more details on these bamboo plants and much more.