Do you need a Bamboo Barrier?

Whether you are trying to keep your running bamboo out of your neighbor's yard or the reverse, or you want to control which areas of your yard it has easy access to, a rhizome barrier is a must.

The regular landscaping guys, if they are willing to tackle it at all, will want to use a trenching machine and install a vertical barrier. Bamboo Rhizomes can go down to 26 inches to get under a vertical obstacle, so a vertical trench needs to go down 28 inches below the local grade to get below that. For much of the Austin area, that's going to be expensive due to tree roots and rock (mostly limestone, caliche, and flint), not to mention deep utilities like gas lines and electrical conduit.

Moreover, bamboo has a clever way of defeating vertical barriers over time. It establishes poles beside the barrier and runs new rhizomes between the pole and barrier, pushing the lip below the surface or pushing it into a sharp underground object.

Since Bamboo poles anchor about 6-8 inches deep, and the rhizomes travel in the top few inches, near the surface, a hand dug trench (9-12 inches deep) and a diagonal barrier that leans away from the incoming rhizomes works better. Forcing the rhizomes to the surface allows them to be trimmed with just seasonal maintenance.