Bamboo... how to reduce.

[ImFree2doasiwant]

There is bamboo around the small pond in my garden. It's going berserk. The pond is in a corner between a fence (neighbours) and a wall. The bamboo is between the pond and the corner, if that makes sense. The pond has large flint rocks around it. The bamboo is growing under the neighbours fence.

I want to significantly reduce the bamboo but was advised that just cutting it would make it grow more.

It's going to be really tricky to dig out.
Any advice please?

Weed killer

Pandas

Well I do love animals, not sure I can access a panda easily.

I'm not sure weed killer is a good idea next to the pond, there are frogs and newts in it.

You're going to do a loooooot if digging. We had to dig down at least two feet at some points, and it was way further under the ground than we could have guessed.

It's fucking horrible stuff. You have my sympathies.

Ugh. I think ill just have to cut it back and go for it. It's really rocky, and really awkward to get into, with it being between the pond and the wall/fence

Exactly like ours! Cutting it back won't help, you have to remove every bit of it.

Put it this way - we missed one piece by accident and it has regrown, and also grown through our stone wall and up under the pavement out on the road!

I'm sure cutting back / thinning out bamboo was covered in the most recent episode of Beechgrove. You should be able to view it on BBC iplayer.

I think it is only really safe to grow bamboo in pots unless you want it to overtake. I would dig it all out and start again.

The bamboo is growing under the neighbour's fence.
If you get rid of only yours then won't it just come back from the neighbour's side. You need coordinated action between the two of you.

We had a mammoth bamboo that was out of control. We cut it right back and dug it out. It was an absolute pain. No other way round it though.

@altforvarmt thank you, I'll look for that.

The neighbour has done their bit, it was only a few bits in their side.

I know what Sundays job is then!

I absolutely hate bamboo. I recently paid 14000 € to dig (goes deep) it all out. 4 day job with 5 and heavy machinery. Completely my fault off course for letting it get to that point. You can use a weed killer but the problem is most require multiple treatments, the regular glyphosate ones and even then results are lackluster.

@Molteni am really hoping you have a typo in your €14000?!

But I sympathise with the OP. My previous neighbour (not a gardener) mentioned to me she was going to plant some bamboo near our fence. I started blurbling on about clump forming and non-clump forming bamboo and she looked at me blankly. It's definitely the more invasive and routinely pops up on my side. I would like some myself but I'd definitely only plant in a pot now. Good luck with digging it out - could you console yourself with it being worse the longer you leave it?

It's been thoroughly neglected unfortunately, although seems to be relatively contained by it's location.

@WobblyLondoner

I was (very) wrong just checked the invoice from February.

It was a total of 5038 €, without VAT.

Biggest cost: 99 working hours (3900€- very reasonable hour rate) - very labour intensive job. Especially since there was some of my wiring running right through it so... 9.5 tons of bamboo (and soil).

As said before, it's entirely my fault. When I got here the bamboo situation was under control. They weren't very high plants. A couple years down the line, they were suddenly massive. I tried with a chainsaw but honestly that wasn't very rewarding work since it grew faster than I could keep up with. In other parts of my garden I still have some bamboo, but apparently that's of an easily containable variety and the guys who removed the bamboo put something in place that prevents spreading.