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Q. Mike: I want to grow bamboo as a privacy screen to separate us from our neighbors. I have tried evergreens, but can't keep them alive, and it is frustrating and expensive. Please let me know what you think about the bamboo. Thank you.
    ---Dana in Ashburn, VA
Mike: We planted bamboo between our driveway and that of our neighbor. Now the bamboo is pushing up the edges of both driveways. Our neighbor is paranoid and believes the root system is traveling underground towards her house foundation (about three car widths away) and has gone to court to have us dig up the roots and replace her driveway. We do not have that kind of money and want to keep the bamboo, as it crowds out weeds and provides a screen.
    ---“Fred” and “Ethel” [not their real names] in Delaware
A. Does that answer your question, Dana in Virginia? “Running” or “arrow” bamboo is often used as an ‘instant privacy screen’ because it’s evergreen, untouched by deer and an amazingly fast grower (one besieged homeowner swore he could hear it getting taller). It also has a root system that will take over any nearby—and not so nearby—piece of ground. Plant it to screen off your neighbors and you may soon see them anyway—in court.

Tall, slim, fast-growing evergreen trees like Leyland cypress and arborvitae planted in a ‘staggered’ fashion (not a straight line) make the best screening plants. You have likely been killing your previous evergreen attempts. Plant their replacements correctly (that means you must remove and discard all wrappings and plant at the original soil height of the container or burlap ball, not lower), water them well for the entire season (and during droughts for the next several years), avoid wood mulches and chemical fertilizer. Do all that and your replacement evergreens should thrive.

If bamboo it MUST be, you must have a rhizome barrier professionally installed to prevent it from taking over the neighborhood. This underground barrier physically contains the culms, and must be installed by someone with the proper equipment.

Sorry, ‘Fred & Ethel’, but that bamboo will buckle your neighbor’s driveway; and reach that short distance to her foundation in a single summer. And case law is leaning in her favor; the Virginia Supreme Court just ruled that deliberate growers of destructive, invasive plants can be held liable by their neighbors for damages and removal.

You can try repeated cutting to exhaust the root and repeated drenching of the soil in summer with high-strength (20%) vinegar; but that driveway will probably protect enough of the root system to thwart you. That leaves the backhoe answer. Talk to your Insurance Agent and see if your homeowner’s policy can help with the removal costs.

Everyone: Don’t plant running bamboo unless you’re willing to install a professional ‘rhizome barrier’ to contain it, or it will be surrounded on all sides by running water, stone cliffs or a wide highway. As you can see, regular old driveways are no match for it.

Q. My hairdresser’s shop gets an amazing amount of blinding, direct sun coming in and he was hoping to block it with a narrow hedge of bamboo. I told him not to plant running bamboo, only the clumping kind; but I don't know how good a screening that would provide. Are there other plants you could recommend? The height needs to be about 10 feet to block the sun. Thanks,
    ---Marcy in Narberth, PA
A. Thank YOU, Marcy, for saving his sidewalk—and maybe even his shop’s foundation! Now, you are correct about clumping bamboos not being problem plants (see the website www.AmericanBamboo.org for more information about clumpers), but they are best grown as specimen plants, and because of their clumping habit, aren’t all that suited to screening. There are a few clumping bamboos that are said to fill in nicely without spreading, and these might work as screening plants in a home landscape if they're planted in a nicely staggered fashion.

But any plant would look really weird covering the entire front of a shop. It might be against zoning laws, and it would be scarily uninviting to potential new customers. I would instead make the INSIDE of that window a showplace of tropical plants. They’ll block (and use) that blinding light, make a great attraction (especially in the winter), and keep the front of the window nice and clear for signage on the glass.

Q. Mike: I live across the street from the Berlin-like cement wall of a train station and want to plant vines to cover the wall. Can you suggest something attractive that grows really fast, will look okay in winter and that doesn't cost very much as there's a lot to cover? Many thanks,
    ---James in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia
A. While I generally applaud ‘guerilla gardening,’ your neighbors—and the transit authority—will be after you with torches and pitchforks if you plant honeysuckle, trumpet, or any other “fast growing; trouble free” vine. Their roots become so thick they can tear up the adjacent pavement; the vines can threaten the physical integrity of the structures they climb; and birds will eat the berries and ‘plant’ the monsters in every yard in the neighborhood.

Now you’re in Philly, James: Home to one of the biggest urban mural painting programs in the nation. So that’s #1: See if you can have your ugly wall turned into a work of art. Philly is also home to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s “Tree Tenders” and “Philadelphia Green” programs; see if you can get them to plant some nice sized trees at the station; maybe even evergreens, which would soften the look in winter as well.

If you really want to do something yourself, consider sowing the seeds of giant sunflowers in front of the wall every Spring. It would look really cool, attract lots of birds and you could leave the massive stalks standing over the winter. They might even self-seed; all you’d need to do is cut down the old plants in the Spring. There's also a perennial sunflower (H. maximilianii) that would look fairly amazing in such a situation--and you'd only have to plant it once. (The flowers look a little different, but it is a true sunflower.)

And if this is just an excuse for you to grow a vine of some kind, take a look at hops. They’re wonderfully fragrant—and fast growing without being invasive.

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