help please - neighbour's bamboo popping up in our garden

[mechanicalpencil]

Hello,

My neighbour has a row of bamboo trees at the end of their garden, just next to the boundary of our garden. We have always had a few stalks popping up now and then but just cut them back. Recently, the bamboo is popping up all over, at first it was close to the boundary, but more recently spreading further. It is very close to the shed we recently put up and I am worried about the damage it could potentially do in general. What happens if it gets up to the house?

I spoke to the neighbours once before about it (one year ago) they said they would look into it but never got back to me.

Any advice? Should we just keep hacking it back?

Photo to follow.

Very grateful for any advice.

I think your neighbour should be more worried about you suing him for damage to your property.
The best solution would be for him to remove every trace from his side and for him to pay for removing every trace from your side.

Hello everyone,
Sorry, i have only just picked up these messages.
The situation with the bamboo has ground to a halt. The neighbours have admitted it is a problem and have said they will be uprooting it all and repotting into big pots. However, they have had a lot going on recently and it has fallen off their radar I think.

@mechanicalpencil I'd start chopping and spraying the stumps with SBK anyway or you'll soon be back at square one. Sooner rather than later, before the sap rises and it starts another growth cycle.

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast thank you for the advice! that sounds like a good plan.

Hi everyone, I've been reading this thread with interest as I have recently pulled up a clumping 3 year old black bamboo which I planted with a strong bamboo barrier and dug deep trench.
It still found a way to send out a rizome to my neighbour through the gap between the fence and concrete boundary near her lawn ( see photo)
She cut the rizome down and I had the bamboo dug out 2 months ago removing every scrap of roots and traces of the bamboo from a small area where it sat for the past 3 years.
I loved my black bamboo but didn't want to have a much bigger issue on my hands where it spreads all over her lawn running deep rizomes....however....
This morning sent me a photo of the same area where there were shoots of bamboo or rizomes, I can't be sure. I went over to chat to her and we came to the idea of sectioning a small square away from the rest of her lawn area. Spray the bamboo shoot with Round up and see if it dies.
I'm really worried that the rizomes have travelled under the lawn. If anyone here who is garden savvy and experienced in this help me I'd be so grateful. I read there's a gardener on this threat, I'd love to hear from you and get some advice. Thank you!
The last photo is from today's bamboo shoot growing.

Awful stuff!
My mil planted some that was supposedly clump forming, well, it was but it still sent out runners a good 10m away and formed another clump, and then another, and another! Huge acres sized garden so it was a while till anyone else noticed what was going on.
Ideally, I’d try and get your neighbour onboard with getting rid of it too, or you’ll be fighting it forever.
Painted on spray worked, the suggestion of mixing with wallpaper paste is a good one, but you’ve got to keep at it over several years.

I’m so nervous because neighbours have planted it against the boundary fence. It’s less than 2metres away from my house wall. As soon as I see any signs of growth on my side I will be going round, and maybe speaking to my house insurance. I can’t believe they planted it only last year, it’s been known to be a menace for years!

@Affydaffy
It is unbelievably persistent and robust stuff. Barriers, trenches annd even concrete are nothing to them, it just keeps penetrating through. Even when you think you’ve dug every last bit up, it can still prove you wrong by popping up again!
Your neighbour might have to dig up her lawn around that area, follow the root, then kind of lift it all up the way from her garden through to yours. Don’t cut anything, try to locate the rhizome and then hopefully you can then get the whole thing out. Cutting leaves you open to the possibility of even a tiny bit left which will pop up again.
Good Luck!

Isn’t it worth digging down and installing barrier material now before anything spreads into your garden?

We had bamboo in our garden which was planted several years ago then became invasive. We pulled all of it out of our side and asked our neighbour to do the same which he did. If you pull it up properly, you don’t need to start nuking your garden with weed killer.

Thank you to all who took the time to reply. I wish that I had potted them from the start....

Not sure if relevant but saw a programme once where they were tackling invasive rhododendron. They drilled a small tunnel into the trunk and injected in a couple of mls of weedkiller. The plant would slowly die with a much lower dose and other plants were unaffected - could you inject stump killer into each bunch with a syringe and needle?

I think you need to speak with them now. I planted on my side against the boundary fence with all the right barriers and deep trench, yet it found its way into their side of the garden after 3 years. Please check my thread photos. You will see what I mean. Show them, too. Home insurance can do nothing about this, to be honest. Sort it out politely with the neighbours and advise them to take it out now and pot it into a thick planter trough made with cement, thick plastic, or galvanised metal. This will become a problem for sure.

Bamboo is awful.. the previous owners of our house planted some and it got out of control.. we dug, covered the area for 2 years and dug again.. but it keeps coming back.

However.. Glysophate should be banned. Environmentalists have been trying to have it banned for decades... but power of the farming lobby and the production companies is too strong.

Bayer who's 40% share of the glysophate market is worth 11Bn euros per annum, have paid out $10Bn in damages to plaintiffs.

I think this stuff is being banned from the UK from December 2025 because we are no longer in the EU. But bamboo is an utter nightmare.

Sometimes the bamboo rhyzomes will grow around the roots of trees and it's practically impossible to remove without removing the whole tree.

It will be the next knotweed or Himalayan balsam. I have it in a few pots and it looks lovely but I’d never plant it in the ground and I check my pots three times a year to make sure there no roots dangling out. It damages foundations of buildings and is very invasive - it will reduce the value of your property.

OP I hope you find a solution.

The only way to get rid of it is to dig it all out. You will have to go deep and the roots spread sideways. I have a mini bamboo I planted at the bottom of my garden and every year DH digs a few chunks out and gives it away. I like it because I like the swaying movement it brings to my garden. It is very pretty and on a windy day makes a swishing sound I find quite soothing whilst I'm sitting in garden.

Who cares if it does. Selfish people, bamboo is horrible it should be illegal

Well, I have had a shock from the neighbour when she sent me a picture of what she managed to dig up from what looked like a few bamboo shoots ( 1st picture) She has a feeling there might be more but how will we know without ripping up the lawn and patio close to the lawn? It's really worrying me to the point of anxiety. Any suggestions what to do now anyone?
I have no more bamboo on the other side of the fence ( my garden ) i've dug it all out but rizomes have obviously spread.

I wouldn't worry if your treatment killed their plant, they're clearly not worried about this invasive plant in your garden.
My friend had it, the roots (rhizones I think) spread underground.

Her husband had to dig it all out and used loads of chemicals.

Agree that glyphosate is horrible stuff, but then so is having to pay out £60k to get rid of it and having to demolish your conservatory.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/my-neighbours-bamboo-caused-60k-worth-of-damage/

Archived article here: https://archive.ph/9rsqp

i had an absolutely beautiful plot of black-stemmed bamboo I’d been given by a friend doing this, which followed to to two different houses and had to be given away before an international move. I still mourn it. Yes, the sound and the way it moves is gorgeous.

In fact, I’ve celebrated this thread by planting some fargesia rufa!

In a pot.

Update on the bamboo removal project I've been working on for, I think, the last three years.

I started by cutting it all down (ha, ha, ha) but that just encouraged it to spread even more. The following year I tried spraying the new growth with Roundup but it still kept going. Then I cut it all down again and applied SBK Stump Killer to the cut ends and whilst that slowed things down a bit, fresh green growth kept appearing.

Last week, me and DH took up the slabs it's been popping up between and revealed the horrors beneath. This has travelled about 15 feet, from the neighbouring garden, and was very close to the house walls. Cutting through the roots needed a saw. All that stuff in the pictures is still alive and doing it's best to send up shoots.

There's a lot more work to be done yet. More slabs need to be lifted and everything dug out but I finally feel like we might be on the way to getting rid of the damned stuff.