Garden Designers & Landscape Gardeners
Garden Buildings in South & East England

Phyllostachys vivax f. Aureocaulis
Left - young shoots on a clump we planted at the Palm centre in West London - see their link on our resources page. This is the best bamboo we at RGC can recommend for almost any garden. It's species - P. vivax has plain green culms which are beautiful in their own right, but otherwise has the same impressive characterisitics as this coloured variety. Both the species and variety are reliable growers with new culms emerging thicker every season and attaining 6cm thick in the UK more quickly than any other species. 
Right - the same clump - only planted 2 seasons earlier using two 12 Litre plants with 2 or 3 thin culms in each pot. The original thin culms can still be seen in this photo alongside the fatter newer culms. 

Clear Buttery Gold Culms - delicious looking. Apparently the young shoots of this species are some of the best Phyllostachys to eat, although much too beautiful to use as food in our opinion. The appearance of these green stripes on the internodes (the long smooth part of the culm - between the 'knuckle' like nodes) is completely random on each internode. Each culm is completely original with stripes either absent, single or multiple and of different thicknesses or they can be one broad stripe wrapping halfway around a culm or just 1mm thick. The leaves of this wonderful plant are large, dark glossy green and clothe the long branches densely enough to weigh them down making them pendulous or the whole culm arch. Although this bamboo does spread it's runners are easily tracked as they are not produced in great numbers each season and are easily controlled if monitored and lifted regularly. We have grown this bamboo for over 10 years in different gardens with a particularly large clump in the Carribean Home From Home (picture to follow) and found it to be hardy enough to grow anywhere in the UK without protection.
This photo courtesy of Noah Bell and Sheewash Bamboo nursery who are copyright holders, see their link on our resources page.