Maid To Garden

In The Garden Of Good Living - September 2010 - Let’s Talk Invasive Plants
by Pat Hendrickson

I have bamboo growing in my yard near my pond. Well, it's actually shooting roots into my pond, and causing it to leak. It's also taking over my neighbors yard at an incredibly fast pace.

In the beginning, there was just the right amount. It looked very pretty, kind of exotic and Asian; something right out of a Pearl Buck novel. I was careful about buying it because I knew that bamboo could really travel once it was established. But the guy at the nursery assured me that this was a compact bamboo and it would stay where I put it. Yeah . . . . and I bought Enron stock, too. Sometimes I just don't know where my head is.

For the first two years, I loved how the bamboo looked. A light, feathery screen, somewhat evergreen, it gave me something to look at during the winter months. During the summer, it was a soft backdrop for the lotus flowers blooming in the pond.

Overnight, it morphed into some kind of thick carpet that covered the entire south side of my pond! Like that terrible movie 'The Blob', it had snuck in and taken over the neighbors' bed, under a maple tree that refuses to let anything grow; it had poked holes in the pond liner, and it was quickly taking over my beautiful, exotic acanthus; my lacetop hydrangea was surrounded, and my tall garden phlox was completely inundated!

There will always be that plant that is beautiful, exotic, and a 'must have'. This is something that will never change. But my word of caution is, research first! Don't be impulsive. Look it up, and make sure that it's not something known for crowding out beneficial plants or natives.

If the plant, be it tree, shrub, or perennial has the potential to take over, don't buy it! It has the capability of crowding out natives that our birds, butterflies and bugs thrive on. If the native disappears, so will the food or habitat that it provides.

In the next month or two you can find me in my bamboo patch digging up a tangled network of roots, trying to 'unstrangle' my poor gasping beauties.

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