[Jedd]

Bamboo species are amazing. I grow Bambusa oldhamii - useful for food (shoots) and timber. It's a clumping variety, so quite easy to control, and tolerant (if not particularly happy) of dry, wet, heat, and cold.

But my clones are taken from a variety that flowered in the 90's, IIRC, so there's some confidence they won't all flower (and immediately die) for another ~70 years.

The variety they're talking about here is a mild running type (most runners are very rampant, and not recommended unless you've got containment systems in place).

Thailand famously had a big flowering event in the late 1980's that killed off vast tracts of plantations.

[checker]

I wish my bamboo (inherited from a previous owner) would flower instead of battling me for control of my yard. I really need to read up on the best way to control it - sounds like my variety might be a "runner".

[dbcurtis]

I think the way to control running bamboo is with a deep solid fence/wall dug into a trench. I am led to understand that there is a depth that a particular specie will not run below.

I may be wrong. The previous owner of my neighbor's house had a bamboo garden... the current owner was not aware of how to maintain it. The previous owner of my house had a rose garden. I am not a particularly clever gardener, and having grown up in Minnesota, was not familiar with the habits of bamboo. The bamboo ran under the fence, and attacked the roses in our yard before I noticed it. The bamboo identified rose bush root clumps, attacked, surrounded, and choked them.

So in the aftermath, I ripped out dead roses and built a play structure for my offspring, my neighbor ripped out the bamboo jungle and created a nice patio, so we both netted out OK. Our research led us to determine that a trenched solid barrier should have been put in place originally, but we weren't going to test the theory.

[Jedd]

Sounds like it. I avoid runners, as the risk is just too high to recover them if they get away. Also in Australia most boo suppliers eschew running varieties, as suburbian horror stories abound.

As noted by dbcurtis, you need to have a physical barrier -- either metal (but that'll eventually corrode) or some very thick rubber (ditto), or concrete - to about 60cm depth, depending on variety. Alternatively they are typically stopped by roads and permanently running creek beds.

My clumpers (Bambusa oldhamii, B.multiplex, B. ventricosa, and B. gracilis) vary in height, but after 15 years the largest is, albeit a very dense, 1.5m diameter clump.

[trashcan]

Check out: http://www.bamboogarden.com/barrier%20installation.htm