Hi Tammy, I would love to do a trade with you. Is there anything else on my tiny list you would like...lol.. I found besides the Forsythia and Rose of Sharon, about 5 others on your list. They would be hydrangea,weigela, obedient plant, sweet autumn clemetis, and siberian iris. Let me know. I will send you a box of bamboo roots or anything else you would like off my tiny list...lol.. Kayjones, I wish you would be in my zone too...lol.. sounds like you have alot. I am such a newbie to perennials its not funny. The more I see the more I want! Its a good thing we have alot of acres..so I can plant till my hearts content. Let me know if you would like some bamboo to try. I have mnore then enough to share...lol..

Mock oranges are like the Spirea, Alpine Currants, etc., they respond well to this; general advice is to do it in early Spring (and hence obviously you lose that years flowering) but you can, in my experience, do it anytime. I did one of my mock oranges, which was leggy with only four stems, with very few flowers, about a month ago. Right to the groumd, and I could not care less if it did not come back. Of course, I now have about fifteen stems about three feet high very vigorously sprouting. I did the same thing last year with Forsythia (should just dig them up because they are already huge again, about 12 feet) and Alpine Currant. I guess the only thing I would say is you don't want to do this so late in the year that your new growth doesn't harden off, as this (not the severe pruning itself) might kill off the shrub. But you are probably fine now.

I have three running species in a 6 x 60 raised bed. Rhizome pruning has kept everything in check so far. On one side there is no irrigation and it is hard clay. I'm not going to prune that side this year and see if anything even shoots. Other side is lawn w/o irrigation. I rhizome prune in the fall and I've had a couple shoots in the spring. I just go back and reprune that area and mow the shoots. While digging a drainage ditch about six feet from the bed, I dug up one dead rhizome that had been pruned in an earlier year. It had no feeder roots and had never sent up shoots. In my climate, this regime seems to be sufficient.

I've grown all three you are considering, and I wouldn't worry about "deep rhizome growth." In fact, I've grown over 80 different species of bamboo, and -- in my experience in Zone 8 -- there is relatively minor variation in how deep rhizomes travel, even among medium-to-large bamboo. Do you really care that one species might go down 6 inches, while another might go down 12 inches? The reality is that rhizomes are heat seeking and tend to stay close to the surface of the ground, rather than diving down like tree roots. Further, barrier installed at least 24"-30" inches deep should give you enough cushion to not worry about the rhizome habits of any bamboo. For those bamboo where I do use barrier, my deepest barrier is 20" deep and I have never had an escaped rhizome. Any of the three you are talking about should work for hedge purposes. However, japonica has numerous and persistent culm sheaths that stay on a long time and look ratty unless you remove them by hand. It also will probably only grow to a little more than half the height of the other two. Spectabilis is beautiful, but will not give you the dense screening afforded by Fastuosa. Also, if you don't know, there is regular Fastuosa and a variant called Fastuosa 'Viridis'; they are both quite nice, with the difference being that the regular version's culms turn a brownish-red color over time, while the culms of the Viridis remain green. My advice is to decide which bamboo provides the aboveground look you want, and let the barrier worry about what happens underground. This post was edited by kudzu9 on Tue, Jul 22, 14 at 13:48