Bamboo Garden

Bamboo Garden is an astounding resource with unique potential to combat poverty and natural resource challenges.

Bamboo Garden is made with Bamboo, the Green Gold!

Bmboo grows locally to some of the world’s poorest communities in the tropics and subtropics, and have many uses, providing a vast range of sustainable products, livelihood options and ecosystem services.

Bamboo is part of the World Permaculture Association water purification series

If we can harness the potential of bamboo, the Global South will be closer to achieving its ambitious development, climate and environmental aims, including the Sustainable Development Goals, green growth, REDD+ targets, the Paris Agreement commitments, and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

The International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR)

Bamboo Garden Is The Industry Of The Future!

Bamboo Garden Is A Promise To The Future!

This material has serious potential!

I know of three ways to evolve and grow in the world.

The first is through crises; those earthquakes happen someone leaves you you get fired from your job you start to change pretty quick.

The second is to shift along with society at society’s pace and that will happen inevitably.

The third is what gets you up in the morning, it’s that sense of taking a personal stand whether or not you’re prepared, whether or not you have the right qualifications or education.

You take a stand and you learn what you need to know along the way.

There’s a lot that can be learned and that can be done very quickly.

I didn’t study architecture, I’m not an engineer, I don’t have an MBA but I’m not alone.

I have an incredible team we have really big dreams.

Elora Hardy

Elora Hardy is creative director of Ibuku in Bali, from greenschool.org.

She established the groundbreaking Green Village alongside the Green School in Ubud.

Elora leads a team of skilled artisans, craftsmen and designers to create homes made of Bamboo.

She previously worked as a designer in NYC, where she created original prints for Donna Karan International and the socially conscious clothing brand Edun.


Potential of Bamboo: John Button and Green School

John Button, one of the lead consultant for my Permaculture Consultation Company, was invited to prepare the landscape design for Green School in Indonesia using Permaculture, at the very beginning of the project.

John lived on site and worked intimately with the architects as they created the extraordinary buildings, blending the landscape inputs to accept the structures occupying the site.

At the same time John created a site in which the environment would awaken the ecological sense of the students.

Bamboo is defined by Project Drawdown as:

The large-scale cultivation of bamboo for timber or other biomass uses on degraded land, which sequesters carbon in soils, biomass and long-lived bamboo products.

This solution replaces other uses of degraded lands like grassland, cropland, and forest.

Bamboo is a woody member of the grass family that grows rapidly.

Bamboo grows in a wide range of environmental conditions, and sequesters carbon at a rate greater than or equal to that of many tree species.

Following planting, Bamboo matures much faster than trees and sprouts via rhizomes, so it does not require replanting.

In fact, harvesting mature culms stimulates the growth of new shoots.

This “friend of the people” has over 1,500 documented uses, including:

building materials, paper, furniture, food, fodder, and charcoal.

Though there are concerns about the invasive potential of bamboo, it should be noted that there are species natives to Asia, Latin America, North America, and Africa.

Many of the best species are clumping types that do not run and flower extremely rarely, making invasion via both roots and seeds very unlikely.

Bamboo is a unique subtype of afforestation worthy of consideration on its own substantial merits.

Bamboo Garden is made with  evergreen perennial flowering plants (of Bamboo) in the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae.

In bamboo, as in other grasses, the internodal regions of the stem are usually hollow and the vascular bundles in the cross-section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement.

The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent.

The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, including the palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering.

Bamboos include some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system.

Certain species of bamboo can grow 91 cm (36 in) within a 24-hour period, at a rate of almost 4 cm (1.6 in) an hour (a growth around 1 mm every 90 seconds, or 1 inch every 40 minutes).

Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family.

Bamboos are of notable economic and cultural significance in South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, being used for building materials, as a food source, and as a versatile raw product.

Bamboo has a higher specific compressive strength than wood, brick or concrete, and a specific tensile strenght that rivals steel.

Bamboo properties and uses

In this utube video below, the company Cariloha Bamboo shows some of the incredible properties of Bamboo.

35 Bamboo Genius And Amazing uses in the utube video below!

With Primitive Technology you can use Bamboo to build your underground house (maybe you can build a Walipini) or your swimming pool.

Enjoy the utube video below:

Bamboo are separated into the following main groups by bamboogarden.com

Hardy Clumping Bamboo

Non-invasive bamboo, 8 to 25 feet tall, which grow in tight clusters, creating dense and decorative screens.

Timber Bamboo 

Tall Phyllostachys over 30 feet tall.

Classic woody-caned bamboo grows large canes for timber, edible shoots, or tall screens.

Mid-sized Running Bamboo 

Shorter Phyllostachys usually 20 to 30 feet tall.

Great for ornamental privacy screens. Some types are very cold hardy.

Other genera of Mid-sized Running Bamboo

including Pseudosasa, Chimonobambusa, Arundinaria, Semiarundinaria, etc.

Small Running Bamboo and Groundcover 

including Sasa, Shibataea, Indocalamus, Pleioblastus, Sasaella, etc.

Cold-sensitive Clumping Bamboo for mild climates

including Bambusa, Otatea, Himalayacalamus. etc.

Rare and Collectable Bamboo    

Bamboo for Growing Indoors

What To Consider Before Creating a Bamboo Garden

  • Most bamboos prefer full sun and a soil pH of around 6.0 to 6.2.
  • Newly planted bamboo requires regular watering, to become established and to send out new culms.
  • Lack of water is the biggest problem with growing bamboo. However, the soil needs to dry out between watering, because standing water will also inhibit growth.
  • Bamboo doesn’t like competition from weeds.
  • Taller bamboo should be staked, to prevent it from uprooting.
  • Bamboos are evergreen and will lose and replace leaves as they grow.
  • Since bamboos are grasses and are grown for their foliage, you should feed with high nitrogen fertilizer.
  • Mulching will help control moisture and will protect cold-hardy varieties in winter.

Bamboo Garden: Tips and Tricks to create it Fast

The utube video below shows how to propagate Bamboo.

It’s vital that you take some time to study proper installation and containment techniques (e.g., what to use for a rhizome barrier, how often to prune the rhizomes, how to create a hedge, etc.).

In the following utube video you will learn how to control a Bamboo Garden.

Warning !

Please avoid planting Bamboo too near to production zones of other plants.

Bamboo will suck a huge amount of energy which will no longer be available to those other plants.

Direct experience from working with bamboo in India, Australia and Bali.

John Button

Bamboo Garden: Conclusion

Permaculturists love Bamboo Garden!

Bamboos are very useful elements in any productive forest Permaculture Design.

They’re all edible.

Many can be used for timber, many can be used as hedging bamboos craft materials.

They’re all stabilizers of soil.

They all control the ground so you don’t get any weeds.

If there’s a hurricane cyclone or an earthquake or a tsunami, one of the safest things you can do is run into the Bamboo Garden and hold.

The Bamboo not gonna get ripped out or broken, this is one of the strongest elements.

Geoff Lawton

This utube video from Geoff Lawton explores the Permaculture view on Bamboo.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE OR LESSON FROM THIS ARTICLE? PLEASE LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS

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Giuseppe Tallarico
 

Giuseppe is a versatile and results-oriented Agronomist specializing in Permaculture, Food Security, and Environmental Management Systems dedicated to consulting large-scale farms through the transition to sustainable and regenerative agriculture to achieve maximum profitability naturally while creating a greener abundant earth for generations to come. Giuseppe is an Accredited Instructor by the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia and a permaculture consultant for the government of Jordan. Giuseppe serves the world permaculture community as the founder and General Manager of the World Permaculture Association, the head of the Urban Permaculture Laboratory Educational Center, and manager of Rigenera, a Permaculture consulting company. https://www.giuseppetallarico.com

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