Marcus Chen · August 25, 2026If you are standing in the fencing aisle holding two rolls that look broadly similar, here is the difference. Reed screening is made from bundled stems of water reed — Phragmites or a similar wetland grass — each stem thin, usually well under a centimetre across, wired together into a dense mat. It is cheap, … Read more
Marcus Chen · August 25, 2026Let me start with the thing most people don’t want to hear, because it will save you a weekend. If you just dug out or cut down a stand of bamboo and you’re standing next to a pile of green culms wondering what it’s worth, the honest answer is: as poles, close to nothing. Freshly … Read more
Marcus Chen · August 25, 2026Most of the bamboo advice I give — and most of the guides on this site — starts from a problem. Someone wants to block a view, or stop a neighbour’s grove from crossing a property line, or find something that survives a zone 6 winter. Those are constraint-first questions, and they have constraint-first answers. … Read more
Marcus Chen · August 14, 2026
A culm is the above-ground, woody stem of a bamboo plant—essentially the pole or cane you see growing out of the ground. If you’ve ever held a piece of bamboo and wondered what you were actually looking at, or spent an hour in a nursery catalog trying to decode why one supplier lists “1.5-inch culm … Read more
Marcus Chen · August 14, 2026
Someone asked me how old my oldest bamboo grove is, and I realized I didn’t have a clean answer — because “how long does bamboo live” is actually two separate questions people mix up all the time. Individual culms have a firm expiration date you can predict almost to the year. The rhizome system underneath … Read more
Marcus Chen · August 14, 2026
I get growth-rate questions constantly — how many inches a day, how many feet a year — but the question that actually determines whether a species belongs in someone’s yard is different: how tall does bamboo grow once it stops? I planted a “fast growing” bamboo along a fence line once without checking its mature … Read more
Marcus Chen · August 6, 2026
Every growth-rate chart on this site is about real bamboo — the kind with rhizomes that can eat a fence line. Lucky bamboo is a completely different plant, and every time I get asked “how fast does my lucky bamboo grow” I have to explain that Dracaena sanderiana plays by houseplant rules, not grove rules. … Read more
Marcus Chen · August 6, 2026
After making a batch of spoons and spatulas from my own bamboo poles, I got curious how the mass-produced sets I’d bought for years were actually built — and the answer surprised me. The process bamboo goes through before it becomes a kitchen utensil is a lot more involved than “cut and carve,” with specific … Read more