Ideas for a windy bed with bamboo!

[TiddleTaddleTat]

We have inherited a garden full of large, overgrown and frankly unsuitable shrubs and trees and have removed or resited a lot of them.

There is a very large bamboo to the side of the flower beds that provides good structure and I want to keep. However after some experimentation over this first full year with the garden, I've decided I would like to have more colourful perennials in the bed. I've got hold of some peonies and malvas and there is already lavender, sage, acquilegia and escallonia that I've planted.

However is this going to look really odd with the bamboo?! It's about 1 metre wide at the base, I'm guessing it's too big to remove and put in a container.

Any thoughts welcome! And recommendations for wind tolerant attractive evergreens would be appreciated ! Thanks

Nobody ?

I personally think that you can stick anything with anything and then see how it looks in full flow and move stuff then. Isn't the advice for a windy spot to go for plants that do well in a coastal setting.

I have two massive bamboos in my tiny garden (DH's idea, not mine!). The issue with them is that they shed a lot of debris that smothers plants underneath, most of which have died. I've had some luck with Heuchera, and ferns. I'm toying with the idea of a Banana in a pot to put next to them. I do find them hard to match aesthetically, maybe stinking iris would both work, and not be smothered?

Could you make a feature of it another way - say with a chair and table and some pots around it? Maybe a couple of big bots with other airy things in it - or contrasting grasses to pick up the movement.

I just think bamboo tends to suck up all the goodness and leave a lot of debris which makes it hard to plant with.

@FatArse123 it's the debris ! Exactly. All those bloody brown leaves that are such a pain to pick up.

@GolightlyMrsGolightly Positioning isn't great to make it into a feature. Basically the previous owners planted loads of big fast growing plants at positions to give privacy from neighbours, without a thought about ongoing maintenance and just how big they'd get. At the moment the bed with the bamboo is our only planting area, and there are a few spots still to fill. It'd be a shame not to plant anything there...
Perhaps there's a way of putting some stones or something around the base of the bamboo and plants further away... I'll give that some thought, thanks

Have you tried thinning out the bamboo? Cut about half the stems (caulms) to ground level so it looks more airy and less clumpy.
Maybe intersperse some tall flowy grasses amongst the border to echo the bamboo shape, too.

Stones! That's a good idea. I might try that.

The debris is an absolute bugger. I don't know why something natural looks so awful, but it just does. DH picks it up now, since he wants the things.

I wondered why someone would have bamboo in their bed but then realised this was in the gardening section

@Saz12 that's a good idea, it definitely needs a general prune as the shape has got a bit unwieldy too. Grasses sound good, it would be nice to see some movement and something evergreen would be useful. I'd better catch up with Adam frost on gardeners world, he's often on about grasses...