Run!

LITTLE ROCK — Bamboo is a grass that looks like a tree, and Dale Almond is an Arkansan who looks like he came from the Australian Outback, bringing his bamboo didgeridoo.

Almond, 59, of Maumelle, better known as “Mr. Bamboo,” is out to convince people that his namesake plant should be everybody’s favorite.

“I’ve been using this handle,” Mr. Bamboo, for 10 years, he says, and it seems to him that more people are coming around to his side of the bamboo fence. The recent Arkansas Flower and Garden Show kept him busy selling the plant that he learned to love as a sprout himself, playing jungle explorer in the canebrakes.

Still, it’s easier to spread bamboo than to spread enthusiasm for a plant that can take over almost like kudzu, only taller than kudzu - even taller than kudzu on a telephone pole. Giant bamboo grows 100 feet tall. Golden bamboo, the kind that Eureka Springs city officials have considered restricting, grows 20 feet high.

Like English ivy and honeysuckle, bamboo “may be planted intentionally but later become unwanted,” according to a report from the Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. In that case, the department’s weed specialist recommends repeated and vigilant sprayings of brush killer.

Complaints against bamboo include that it blocks the sun but mainly that it spreads unmercifully thanks to a root system that just won’t quit. The roots can be above ground, can sneak through fences, can dig their way into the neighbor’s yard.

Just as people talk about how to kill monster plants in movies about creeping invaders (The Thing, The Day of the Triffids), so do theories abound on how to control bamboo.

“There are a lot of tricks to bamboo,” Almond says. “You can get rid of it. It’s just not an easy thing to do.”

One tip he is willing to share: Chop the sprouts with a shovel. But he’d rather say good things about bamboo.

The bwahh-mmm! sound of his didgeridoo is a trumpet to herald the plant’s many benefits including:

Bamboo grows quickly to provide a line of foliage for shade and privacy - a quick way to screen off an unsightly view, much faster than trees grow. Some kinds of bamboo can grow inches, even feet overnight.

“This time of year,” Almond says, “is the best time to plant.”

Bamboo of different sorts grows from reedlike to a foot in diameter - the makings of everything from garden stakes and trickling garden fountains to heavy construction.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) was built of movie make-believe, not bamboo, but tourists go for bamboo raft rides under the Burma Railroad Bridge on the Khwae Yai River in Thailand, where many other bridges are made of bamboo.

Flower vases, planters, wine coolers - all can be fashioned of bamboo, Almond says, and he makes the wares to prove it.

Bamboo is an ancient Chinese medicine, touted online as good for everything from fungal infections to smoother, sexier skin. Maybe so, maybe not, but National Institutes of Health reports promise in the study of bamboo extract in cancer treatment.

“And,” Mr. Bamboo says, lowering the didgeridoo, “this will cure snoring.”

Science agrees. The Mayo Clinic reports that didgeridoo playing “needs more study,” but 25 minutes of honking a day “may help train muscles of the upper airway” for better, quieter sleep.

“I’m just a mean green mother from outer space, and I’m bad!” - Audrey II the killer plant, Little Shop of Horrors

“Among Southerners, few plants elicit such strong emotions as bamboo,” according to The Southern Living Garden Book (Oxmoor House, 2004). People tend “either to love it or to want desperately to kill it.”

“Summer and winter, it keeps on growing,” Mr. Bamboo says - for him, a bragging point, and for some other people, a reason to stomp on the shoots (but they generally survive).

Eureka Springs is a case in point in Northwest Arkansas: home to a good bit of bamboo and several residents who convinced city council member Lany Ballance to try and make it quit growing all over.

“Some people up here are upset about bamboo encroaching into their yards,” Ballance says, “in fact, yards and yards into their yards.”

“It is quite invasive,” she agrees, but so far, “I don’t know what can be done about that.”

“Get help! I hope whatever’s taking place is confined to Santa Mira!” - Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Garden and landscaping guides commonly blim-bam on bamboo:

“Some bamboos have a dark side - their invasive, spreading roots can take over a garden, transforming beautiful planting designs into dense jungles.” - The Complete Gardener’s Guide (DK, 2011).

“Growing bamboo as a living fence may seem like a good idea, but bamboo has no respect for property lines.” - Ask the Garden Doctor (Better Homes & Gardens, 2010).

Bamboo does not rate a mention in Elvin McDonald’s The 400 Best Garden Plants(Packaged Goods, 1995), except as a source of sticks to hold up better choices.

And readers of the Home-Style section already know garden advice columnist Janet Carson’s word on bamboo. Boo especially to “running bamboo,” as opposed to “clumping bamboo,” the kind that spreads less.

To a reader who asks if bamboo is a good idea, the columnist answers: “Not running bamboo - or your neighbors won’t be your friends anymore.”

One cautious way to plant bamboo is confined to a pot. Another is to install a concrete or metal barrier above and below ground to stop the roots. The American Bamboo Society offers this advice at bamboo.org:

“We recommend for most situations a barrier of 30 inches deep.

“If the bamboo planting can be surrounded by a shallow trench 8 to 10 inches wide, this can be a cheaper and easier method to control its spread.

“You just need to check a couple of times in the late summer and fall to see if any rhizomes have tried to cross the trench, and cut them off. This check for spreading rhizomes is easy, but very important.”

“The Ents are going to war.” - Treebeard, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Bamboo is in such demand in other ways that things have come to this: faux-as-in-phony bamboo home furnishings.

In fact, furniture made to look like bamboo goes back hundreds of years. In London, it ornamented the homes of the less well-to-do - those who couldn’t afford to travel to exotic places but wanted to surround themselves as if they had been to the Orient.

Today’s shopper can find imitation bamboo beds and dressers, paneling, garden stakes that never rot and back-deck tiki torches that never crack.

Or, if they listen to Mr. Bamboo, they can have the real thing.

“I like it,” he says. “It just comes natural.”