A little off the top

With cool weather finally hitting the St. Louis area this weekend, I was busy, busy, busy in the garden. All of the little things that I would have been doing over the last month or so if only it wasn't so hot, well, they piled up. Finally I get to do them, and can get my yard back under control.

For instance this bamboo along my driveway (Phyllostachys bissetii). I've posted about it before, how I keep coming up with ways to prevent it from drooping and flopping, yet it always seems to form an oppressive wave of green, getting in the way and darkening this area.

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There are a lot of nice potted plants on the driveway here, but the great bamboo wave was blocking the view of them:

It was just too much. The solution was rather simple though:

Pruning. I cut the tops off every culm that was bent over the driveway:

I was ruthless and didn't really think about what I was doing. Once I started cutting I just kept on going. I took about the top third or quarter of the problem culms off.

Soon, I had a large pile of cuttings and a nice neat wall of bamboo again, with no leaning culms:

I think it looks great now! It's not a finely manicured hedge -- which I would hate I think -- but it's still more hedge-like, which is perfect for the driveway.

Here are the before and after shots looking down the driveway:

Much better! Unfortunately I trimmed off most of the variegated leaves from that one culm:

I had completely forgotten it was there! Chances are the variegation was environmental and it won't happen again on any other culms, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for it next year.

I'm just glad to have this plant back under control. Now I just have to worry about pruning the part that's not visible: the underground rhizomes.

That's going to take more than five minutes of work with some hand pruners though.

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