Exploring the creative potential of bamboo
Crafted at home in Liverpool with simple hand tools from bamboo I harvested in private gardens in South Africa and Germany, and some bamboo I ordered online in UK:
Short demonstrations here:
Thanks to Bananas Media for photos and video 🙂
In early July last year I ordered 3 Moso seedlings (Phyllostachys edulis – a giant timber bamboo) on ebay Germany and had them sent to my parents who lovingly potted them up and looked after them.
One of them I took to Liverpool in my hand luggage, and the other two were moved into my parent’s conservatory in autumn – to receive great interest from a little visitor who managed to sneak in unnoticed:
Unfortunately the liking was to such extreme that she completely devoured one of the bamboos and badly ‘pruned’ the other – to then have a nap in the sun-warmed pot!
Luckily the survivor recovered with plenty of TLC by my parents and is currently doing very well on the warm and sunny window sill in their lounge.
The Moso I carried in my hand luggage survived the trauma of the journey to England with no signs of damage:
I keep moving it around the room during the day for maximum sun exposure, and beginning of October a beautiful new shoot emerged:
I decided to give it a bit more space so now it is living in a discarded colander suspended in a bucket:
At the end of February, I got news from Germany that a new shoot emerged, and the plant in UK also produced this beautiful new sight over the last couple of weeks:
Of course the new shoots still have a very small diameter, and growth is very slow compared to the species I planted in South Africa, but they are equally enchanting:
One day they will be big and strong enough to be planted out, I yet have to find a suitable location – Moso is a hardy bamboo native to China and Taiwan and can survive temperatures down to minus 17 degrees celsius, but it likes a long, hot summer with plenty of rainfall to grow to it’s full size. In Europe it is now being commercially farmed in Southern Italy, and I would love to see how it will do in the area I grew up in. Aschaffenburg has the nickname “Bayrisches Nizza” (Bavarian Nice) for it’s mild climate, and in the right spot with the right care I believe Moso could do well.