Grow your own “bamboo” – yes even in Westcliff!
The prescribed garden design wisdom is that if you have a small garden, a few BIG plants provide impact and enhance the look of the space. So whilst these big beasts are all well and good in the glossy garden magazines, I was keen to have something that combined both horticultural impact and a practical resource to harvest on site; Beauty and Bounty without the imported “bamboo miles” if you like.
Enter Arundo donax, aka the Giant Reed. It is big, very big – this year, it’s reached 14 foot and rising; It is clump-forming, so no running off around the rest of your (or the neighbour’s) garden. It also makes a lovely noise in the breeze and in turn acts as a green and natural filtering windbreak for our bee hives. Visiting birds love it too, using the canes as landing pads before they check out what is on offer on the nearby bird table.
And at the end of the season you can cut it down to the ground and use the tough stems (should that be canes?) to grow your beans up, or create frames for climbers. Last year’s canes were the perfect support for our climbing French beans and this year’s growth were the perfect height for the bean plants when they outgrew the canes.
Slugs don’t like Arundo donax – and neither do Pandas, which is handy….for Westcliff.
Simon
