Sorry to see so many people are having the same issues as me, with invasive Bamboo. Mine was actually won at a landscape show as I worked in the green industry. It was suppose to be a non-running, clumping, compact form of Bamboo. Boy do I wish I kept the name of the nursery that donated it. Needless to say, 7 years later, I've been trying to keep the "running bamboo" from running to far onto the neighbors property. To add fuel to the fire, like so many, I have Japanese Knotweed also invading my property. Seems to like to hang out with the bamboo more than anything else though. Another invasive, rhizomatous devil. Easier to cut down and pull out though. Some friends in the business told me to cut the bamboo stalks (preferably new growth) flush to or lower than ground level, so you only have one or 2 segment walls left. Then, drill through those segment walls so you can pour some type of borax solution down (for a more natural approach) or glyphosate (max dose), and actually reach the rhizomes to kill. I'm wondering if that's what people are seeing ooze from their rhizomes. Whatever they poured into the stalk/segment hole. I'm glad to hear of the salt approach. I may try that. I've also had some degree of luck with the tarp method, however, my bamboo is growing on a rocky hill that is very difficult to navigate without injury. Godspeed everyone!

REMEMBER WHEN THIS WAS THEIR ANSWER TO THE LOW LAKE?????? LAKE OKEECHOBEE BACKPUMPING FACT SHEET Lake Okeechobee has a surface area of 730 square miles and is the second largest freshwater lake wholly within the United States.  The Lake has been classified by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as a Class I Drinking Water source, which requires strict standards allowing only small amounts of pollution.  The Lake is the sole source of drinking water for several small towns on the south rim of the Lake and one of the sources of drinking water for West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, and the entire Lower East Coast metropolitan area.  The region south of the Lake, known as the Everglades Agricultural Area ("EAA"), contains over a half million acres of former Everglades that have been diked and drained to make them suitable for urban and agricultural development. Most of the land is in sugar cane cultivation.  Three companies own 87% of the land within the EAA. One of those companies is the United States Sugar Corporation which owns 104,000 acres in the EAA, much of it in the area directly south of Lake Okeechobee.  Polluted water is pumped off the sugar cane fields and collected in large District-owned canals.  At the north ends of these canals, the District owns and operates three pumping stations, S-2, S-3, and S-4, which are built into the Herbert Hoover Dike that surrounds Lake Okeechobee.  Each of these pumping stations has either three or four very large pumps each powered by a diesel engine about four times the size of a semi trailer engine. When all the pumps in a pump station are operating, the discharge is equivalent to the flow of a medium size Florida river.  The flow from the pumps creates a highly visible "plume" of dark (sometimes even black) colored water that can reach nine miles out into Lake Okeechobee.  The plume contains high levels of nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) and high levels of dissolved organic materials that come from agricultural and urban wastes.  One of the largest pump stations is within 2 and ½ miles of the drinking water intake of South Bay, one of the small towns on the south rim of the Lake that uses the Lake for drinking water.  Earthjustice brought this lawsuit against the South Florida Water Management District in 2002 on behalf of the Florida Wildlife Federation.  The case is a Clean Water Act "citizen suit" which sought a declaration from the court that the District had to obtain federal Clean Water Act "point source" permits for its pump station discharges.  As "point sources," the discharges from the pumping station must meet pollution limits applicable to Lake Okeechobee.  The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians entered the lawsuit in support of the environmental groups.  The United States Sugar Corporation entered the case in support of the District.  The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered the case on the side of the polluters - the District and U.S. Sugar - in early 2005. This was the first occasion in the 33 year history of the EPA that it entered a water pollution case on the side of a polluter.  No EPA witness testified at the trial and no EPA witnesses were provided for depositions.  Florida Wildlife Federation argued that when the District collects and then moves water in a way that harms the receiving water body (here Lake Okeechobee) it is responsible for cleaning up the pollution in the same way a city is responsible for cleaning up sewage it collects in its sewage system before it discharges its wastewater.  On average, the S-2, S-3, and S-4 pumping stations discharge 32 billion gallons of water into Lake Okeechobee each year.  Today, on average, the pumps contribute the equivalent of 60,000 one hundred pound bags of phosphorus to the Lake each year.  Because of this excessive fertilization, the Lake now chronically suffers from toxic blue-green algae blooms, including one in 2005 that generated toxin levels in Lake Okeechobee 65 times greater than the World Health OrganizationÂs safe drinking water guidelines.  Blue-green algae toxins can affect the liver, nervous system and skin and have been linked to increases in liver cancer, chronic fatigue illness, skin rashes, abdominal cramps, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, as well as deaths of dogs and cattle. The toxins are not removed by chlorination or boiling and algaecides (which kill the algae) result in the release of the toxins into the environment.  Phosphorus pollution levels in the Lake have risen continuously from about 40 parts per billion in 1960 to 240 parts per billion last year  an all time high. Phosphorus is a main ingredient in fertilizer and is an important component of animal waste and sewage.  The state and EPA have recently determined that the maximum allowable level of phosphorus pollution is 40 parts per billion.  In 1976, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection contended that backpumping into Lake Okeechobee from the pumping stations should be stopped. At trial, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection reversed position and sided with the District in contending that no Clean Water Act permit was necessary.  After the trial was completed but before a decision was issued, EPA proposed an administrative rule that would exempt all water transfers from permitting under the Clean Water Act. The South Florida Water Management District  the defendant in the backpumping case  explained that the rule is "expressly designed" for the backpumping lawsuit.  Thirteen states and the Canadian province of Manitoba filed comments in opposition to the proposed EPA rule as did over 50 national conservation organizations.  Earthjustice will take the EPA to court to challenge the legality of the new water transfers exemption rule when it is adopted by EPA. The theory of the case will be that EPA may not legally exempt any polluters from the Clean Water ActÂs permitting requirements.

First of all, to the best of my knowledge the everglades are a protected area, and any collection of wild plants is generally considered to be illegal (at least here in Canada it is). You also would be running a high risk of introducing molds or other fungi or parasites of some kind or worse, snails and slugs, into your terrarium, so it's really not worth the 'free' material! Most terrariums, even the most beautiful ones, are largely composed of common houseplants, which are really quite cheap. You can buy the little pots for $1, and they will grow very quickly into large plants in a terrarium because they just love the humidity so much! (If you have enough light). BTW, what kind of light did you have on your salt tank? And take your time planning this, because it was a lot of work for me to re-do my 85 gallon terr to make the waterfeature work and the landscape more interesting, and it would be 3 times that amount of work if you ended up re-doing your tank because you rushed through it the first time! One thing you could do now, besides reading, is visit a good greenhouse or nursery, or even a Home Depot with a good plant department near you, and look at all the plants and write down which ones you like. Then research them on the 'net to see how big they get, if they can take being constantly moist, etc. Good terrarium plants: stay small or are easily trimmed back without ruining the appearance of the plant, love high humidity, are not invasive (unless you don't mind trimming them back frequently), have interesting leaf shapes or patterns or colour (though you also need some 'plain' stuff, or the terrarium becomes too 'busy' and you don't appreciate the unique plants), like a constant moisture level (no drying out between waterings, except for plants mounted up high, close to the lights), and do not require extremely high light levels. Anything that needs full sun in nature is a bad choice for a terrarium unless you have a metal halide bulb, but that can cause problems with overheating if you're not careful. Since you're in Florida, humidity isn't exactly a problem, so you should listen to everything gary says about needing fans, not needing a cover for your tank, and how to cool your tank in the very hot summers (fans).

That wavy bed looks sloppy being immediately adjacent to the straight walkway and the angularity of the house - in the cartoon provided it looks like the house fell out of the sky onto a pizza. And if it is already intended to have mostly lawn beyond the existing bed and walk then both aesthetically and practically it would be better not to cut the lawn off from the house and walk with a second bed along the outside edge of the walk. Instead of integrating the house with the surrounding acreage the wavy bed isolates it, like a stockade. As far as softening the house is concerned that would be accomplished primarily by plantings in the bed between the walk and the house. Except where trees of sufficient eventual size would be planted in particular other places near the house. Trees that would serve visually enhancing functions not provided by low shrubs placed within an incongruously informal bed. As for there being no conventions or traditions behind what I am talking about look at films, videos and photos of countless large country houses just in Britain and Northern Europe alone that have paving or turf coming almost right up to them. Often with climbers on the facade and foundation plantings (if present at all) being the extent of greenery immediately in front of the building (except for any large trees that may be reaching over from the corners etc.) This includes properties that may have acres and acres of fully appointed grounds containing plant collections and other features of international significance out away from the house, where these do not distract from it visually.