The Well Behaved Bamboo

Bamboo—it is a plant that Americans find fascinating and frightening at the same time. Its shiny canes, known as culms, encircled by evenly spaced bands, invite one to reach out and touch its cool, smooth surface, while the slender leaves rustle in the breeze like a whispering wind chime.

Although bucolic thoughts of cutting a bamboo pole and going fishing are fun, no one wants to have the grove of bamboo in their yard from which that pole was cut. Reports of bamboo taking over the space around it with overwhelming speed and tenacity are as well known as the frustration of property owners who have tried everything in their power to eradicate it. Those reports have given this plant a reputation similar to that of killer Kudzu. Who in their right minds would want to intentionally plant it?

But that’s exactly what Gabriel Kleinmichel is about to encourage local gardeners to do. In the next few weeks Gabriel will begin offering a number of varieties of bamboo at her nursery, The Garden Barn in Advance Mills, and is educating gardeners about the different types of bamboo that are not only graceful and architecturally beautiful but well behaved in the garden as well.

“Bamboo’s bad reputation is because Americans don’t understand it,” she explains. “Just as with any plant, you have to select the right plant for the right location or the plant isn’t going to be successful, either for you or for the plant itself. I know it sounds funny but when I sell a plant, I feel responsible for it. I don’t want it to go where either the plant or the buyer isn’t going to be happy and thrive.”

Other countries around the world have embraced bamboo since the beginnings of civilization, depending on it not only for food, shelter, tools and as a versatile raw material resource, but for its sheer beauty and calming qualities as well.

Most people in this country know only the running varieties of bamboo that can and do spread invasively. Many types of clumping varieties don’t spread uncontrollably, growing only to their given size depending upon the plant, and serving as great garden plants.

In fact, there are more than 1,400 varieties of bamboo worldwide. The plant, in some form or another, is native to every continent on the globe except for Antarctica. They grow to various heights, from low growing ground covers that one can walk on to plants that are more than 60’ tall, able to be substituted for trees when it comes to harvesting building materials and it is now rivaling King Cotton as a source of fabric. Some offer wonderful form and texture to a garden while their quick growth soon provides privacy, definition and accents in the landscape. The clumping varieties are known for putting as much energy into growing up as the running types put into expanding their turf boundaries.

But as fast as these plants grow, that is just how difficult they are to propagate, perhaps a reason why more Americans know so little about the different types. Bamboo does not respond well to being divided, as with most garden plants. New divisions often die before becoming established and it can take three to five years to bring a successful division to marketable size. As for flowering and producing seed, bamboo will flower only once every 15 to 120 years, depending upon the species, and then the plant dies—not exactly ideal for commercial nurseries when it comes to introducing the desirable varieties of bamboo.

But thanks to a Washington state woman, Jackie Heinricher, the commercial propagation of bamboo is shining in a brighter light these days. Having grown up with a father who loved to grow unique plants from foreign places, such as bamboo, Jackie was fascinated with the plants. In 1996 she decided to attempt to clone bamboo from tissue samples for her own nursery, Boo-Shoot Gardens. Hiring a nearby laboratory firm that had been successful in cloning Boston Ferns, Jackie, a biologist herself, began working with the firm’s staff to use tissue samples to increase plant stock.

Success was hard won for it took the team eight years and many failures before they had any success. Finally they discovered how to propagate Fargesia rufa, the Chinese clumping bamboo loved by pandas. By taking a cutting from an existing plant, sterilizing it in bleach and then putting it into an agar of salts, plant sugars, hormones, vitamins and other ingredients, they were able to encourage new growth. But the combination of ingredients used change for different varieties of bamboo and it is a painstaking effort.

Now, however, Jackie’s Boo-Shoot Gardens offers 28 different species of bamboo, from the small, ground cover types to the towering timber types of running bamboo. She now has 40 other types of bamboo in the research and development stages. And, as the first person to successfully clone bamboo, her business is growing as rapidly as her bamboo.

In 2004, when Boo-Shoot was first successful in cloning bamboo, the company shipped 2,000 plants. In 2008, Jackie expects to ship around one million plants and not only the clumping types that are perfect for home gardens. The world is just now appreciating what bamboo has to offer us in terms of fighting pollution and helping to reduce the greenhouse effect while providing needed construction materials, fibers for fabrics, paper, food and many, many other sound, earth-friendly uses. Business people from all over the world are now beating a path to Jackie’s door as she helps them achieve their bamboo solutions.

Want some bamboo facts? Did you know that bamboo removes four times more carbon dioxide from the air than an equivalent-size stand of trees and, according to a Dutch scientist, it releases 35 percent more oxygen into the air than do trees. Moreover, bamboo is capable of filtering heavy metals from groundwater.

When it comes to erosion control, bamboo’s net-like root system can hold soil together along fragile riverbanks, in areas prone to earthquakes and mudslides. Its canopy can reduce rain run-off, helping to keep up to twice as much water in the watershed, and unlike trees when they are cut down, harvesting bamboo, when done correctly, does not kill the plant so the roots will continue to hold the soil in place.

Many timber-type bamboos can be sustainably harvested about every five years instead of the every few decades that hardwoods require. No wonder manufacturers are turning to bamboo as the raw material of choice for so many products. And Boo-Shoot Nursery is where they are going for their bamboo needs.

However, it was the beauty of clumping bamboo in the garden that started Jackie’s quest to propagate these unique plants and it is Gabriel Kleinmichel’s desire to provide her customers with unique combinations of plants for their gardens that is bringing Boo-Shoot bamboo to Central Virginia.