The Bamboo Parable

The war of attrition against an invasive foe in my garden is a parable for the battle against the agri-corporation in our agricultural landscapes

Photo by Eric BARBEAU on Unsplash

Bamboo; it’s an incredible plant. The subject of Pandas’ dreams (as well as eco-conscious consumers), some species are able to grow at a rate of 1mm every 90 seconds (an absurdly fast growth rate for a plant), and in China, vast forests of what is essentially a grass cover mountainsides up to 46 metres high. Like I said, bamboo is an incredible, even wonderful plant. Yet at the moment, it is my arch-enemy. For I will tell you where bamboo is not meant to grow: in a small patio-garden in the sunny south of England. Here it is not a wonderful plant — it is an absolute catastrophic menace.

We rent our small house. For now, it is all we can afford — especially in the south of England where prices are sky high and mortgage rates are still recovering from Liz Truss’ ill-fated economic experiment¹ along with the rampant inflation the West has been plagued with. So, for now, we have to make do with the imperfections of renting and the frustrations that come with the decisions made by previous tenants. And this is where we get to the mystery of how a plant native to the warm and humid climate of China came to inhabit our garden. A garden which, for a good part of the year, is definitely not warm, and hardly ever is humid (one aspect of our weather that English people can be universally grateful for). A previous tenant decided that it would be a splendid idea to plant numerous bamboo plants in the tiniest of borders to the patio in our minuscule garden. Any horticulturalist worth their salt would have told you this is a bad idea — no, more than that — a very, very bad idea, as certain species of bamboo have invasive tendencies which cause them to shoot out rhizomes everywhere in order to spread far and wide. Needless to say, the bamboo that our unnamed tenant planted can be numbered among these unenviable species. So, lo and behold, we inherited a sprawling, towering, green mess that is pushing its way up through the patio and spreading to neighbours gardens...

Far from ideal.

It is a constant and relentless war one has to fight with this bamboo. No matter how hard one beats it back, come the summer, new shoots emerge like living rockets. Everywhere. One day there could be nothing, the next there are myriad purple spear tips erupting all around. This year, I lost control. Having spent (to my wife’s displeasure) too much attention on my prized heritage tomatoes, I neglected to keep up the war of attrition against the invasive nemesis. Couple this with a week in Germany which coincided with the heat of spring (and thus the most intense offensive mounted by the bamboo), come the Autumn our garden currently contains a matted green mess of thick, new bamboo growth shooting off from hundreds of thin bamboo stems. It is an impenetrable wall of greenery — a Great Green Wall of China in our tiny little garden.

Far from ideal.

Now that the bamboo’s offensive has slowed, thanks to the cold weather we have been having of late, I have seized my chance to take back the initiative. I have spent the last few weeks cutting back this explosion of growth bit by bit to try and tidy our garden’s jungle — and hopefully stop the spread to our neighbours garden. It is easy to focus on the accessible outer growth, but to really make progress — to deliver killer blows — one needs to get at the stems that are hidden away in the impenetrable green wall. One cut here with the secateurs (or loppers for the thicker stems) and a whole mass of growth can be removed at once which otherwise would have taken countless cuts to remove. I am known for bemoaning our society’s infatuation with efficiency — but there is one area of life where efficiency is almost unequivocally a virtue: war (provided, of course that one is on the side of justice). And this, my friends, is a war.

As I have been contemplating my Autumn Offensive, my mind has wandered on to what I would rather be doing — writing about agricultural and nature themes. However, I came to realise that I was enacting a living parable in my relentless war against the green invader — one that was perfect fodder for an essay. I saw the similarities between the attritional battle I was waging against bamboo and the fight against the big agri-corporation’s dominance in our weak and vulnerable agricultural landscapes.