My first bamboo.

My interest in gardening started in the summer of 2007.  We had just bought a house the previous fall and it was not landscaped.  In 2007 I planted a few shrubs in front of the house and a couple perennnials.  I mainly dreamt about my plans for the backyard in the summer of 2008.  I had always wanted a water feature and I had the intentions of building a pond.  That winter I bought some books on perennials and I was hooked.  I started noticing landscapes in a different way.  I noticed the colors, plants, textures, leaf sizes and shapes in a way I had never paid attention to before.

I was always on the lookout to identify plants I had seen in my books and I started looking for opportunities to visit gardens and parks.  In the summer of 2008 we visited the Island Preserve Company in New Glasgow PEI.  Adjacent to the restaurant and shop is the Garden of Hope, a 12 acre park with over 400 different plants.  When cruising through the trails a certain plant really caught my eye.  It was a short, shrubby plant in the heavy shade of spruce trees.  It looked like bamboo.  I searched the ground for some sort of identification but there was none.  So I searched the plant and I found a small tag.  I stole the tag. 

The tag said Fargesia murielae - el Summit Perennial Nursery.  This meant absolutely nothing to me at the time.  I did not recognize the genus or the nursery.  Weeks later I looked up the nursery online and found that it was in Mt. Uniake, Nova Scotia. 

In spring 2009 I planned a trip to el Summit perennial nursery.  When I arrived I noticed how different it was from any other nursery I had been to before.  It was just someone's house.  The owner Leo Smit met me in the driveway and toured me through his grounds.  There were small bunches of potted plants everywhere.  He seemed to know where things were but there was no signage.  You would be lost without his assistance.  I asked him about the bamboo and he found me a small 1 gallon specimen.  It looked pretty sad but I was not concerned.  I was so excited to find it that I really didn't pay much attention to his in ground specimen which I think was about 6 feet tall with a clump diameter of about 12 inches.

My invoice contained information about the plants I purchased that day but I really didn't pay much attention to it.  I went home, planted the bamboo and the obsession began.  I recently dug out that invoice.  It explains how he obtained the seed from Insigne Garden Design in 1999.  He had grown these plants from seed from a few plants that had flowered in Dartmouth in 1998, 1999.  The plants are expected to flower every 92 years.

Of course I did not take any pictures of the bamboo in the ground in 2009.  It didn't grow at all that summer.  I was quite concerned about it wintering in New Brunswick 4b.  Fargesia murielae is said to be hardy to zone 5.  The first winter I tried to protect it by placing a bale of hay near the plant and wrapping burlap around the hay and plant and attaching it to the fence behind it.  (It turns out this wasn't the best method.  It kept the insulation of the snowfall off the plant and really the bamboo was exposed to the coldest temperatures of the winter.)  The 2 pictures below show the plant in early Spring when temperatures were still below zero.  Notice the evergreen leaves are rolled to prevent dessication from cold winter winds.

Fargesia murielae (Spring 2010)

Fargesia murielae (Spring 2010)



Fargesia murielae (later that Spring)

 I was quite concerned when I saw the leaves rolled up but soon I read a book on bamboo that explained this was normal.  The book is called Hardy Bamboo by Paul Whittaker.  This book revealed that I had the potential to grow much larger running bamboo types on the East Coast and the obsession was intensified.
I ordered a bunch of different Phyllostachys species that summer and planted them.  This was their first winter and since our Spring has been so cold and wet, none of them have started shooting yet.  I can't wait to see if they upsized at all.

Speaking of upsizing.  The Fargesia murielae sent up 3 shoots in late summer of 2010.  A couple of them were taller than the rest and they did well over the winter.  I bent the culms down, covered the plant in plastic and the snow did the rest. 


Fargesia murielae (Summer 2010)



Fargesia murielae (Spring 2011 - notice the new branches forming from last year's shoots)

When I move, I will be bringing this plant with me.  I'm sure the transplant will slow down it's upsizing again but this was the first.  I also look forward to visiting the specimen at Island Preserve Company this summer and making notes about a more mature plant. 

My father in law and I have big bamboo plans for this summer in PEI.  If things go right, we may have the most complete collection of bamboo in all the East Coast of Canada.  I can't wait to write that Blog.