I will differ with gardener1 a bit and say that bubblewrap will protect the pot for a short time, but, if you have sustained cold temperatures, all the bubblewrap in the world won't keep the pot from reaching the ambient temperature. In other words, if you have a bamboo that has a hardiness rating of 10F and you have a sustained temperature at or below that level, a bamboo in a well-protected pot may last a day or two longer, but it will ultimately succumb like the same bamboo in an unprotected pot...just not as soon. gardener1 is also correct that winter dryness in a house can damage a bamboo...but this can be countered by misting daily. If you have to choose between worrying about it being cold enough outside to kill the plant vs. worrying about it being too dry inside and having to mist it, you may want to choose the latter.

Hi, Michael and Mike! :) Michael, Yeah, bungalows we've got :) I live in an apartment built about 1970 in the widely practiced Bland-ism style :) but I look enviously at all the beautiful bungalows as I drive past. Weather and climate are a lot like Japan's, but we have cooler, drier summers and milder winters. Yeah, it's tough, but us mossbacked webfoots can take it. Sun-loving southrons sometimes suffer from severe photon deficiencies, though :) A lot of the native plants are very similar to Japanese natives, too. If I were going to put in another tree (I'd need a very large shoehorn :), I'd go for the native Vine Maple (Acer circinatum), which has lovely fan-like leaves (think A. shirasawanum) with *gorgeous* spring growth & fall color, an elegant gently twisting habit, and grows almost exactly like a weed around here. [Don't move here, though, unless you really do enjoy rain, and clouds, and overcast; and don't mind going for as much as two or three months without seeing that big yellow glowing thing up in the sky. If you truly enjoy sitting out in the sun (or want to be able to sucessfully ripen tomatoes), this is not your climate.] From the USDA zone map, zone 10 looks like it places you either in the Imperial and/or Death Valleys, or in The Greater Los Angeles Area (as it used to be called when I lived there). Going by raw population numbers, the chances are that you're somewhere in LA, which means that you have all the architecture in the world, from excellent to execrable, just beyond your doorstep. Aren't there some pretty nice bungalows in Pasadena, and in & around the Fairfax District? Am looking at that middle gate at Kanjyu-an on p.72 of Keane's "Japanese Garden Design". Is it just me (and/or the angle of the photo), or does that roof have a complex compound curve to it that would do justice to Tomorrowland? Nifty as all get out :) Could those narrow little shingles be bark? Tell me I'm seeing things: it almost looks like some one took a really big (say 8 to 10 foot diameter) tree trunk, quartered it, hollowed out all but the bark and several of the last few tree rings, turned it sideways and set it on that gate for a roof. Is that possible? Or were those mushrooms last night not really shiitakes? :) :) :) Mike-san, I'll look for Carol Stangler's book at the library today. I only have one bamboo, a Fargesia nitida with seven culms and two new shoots. (My garden is very small, 1.5 m by 3 m, about 1.5 tsubo). I read in Ted Meredith's bamboo book that this bamboo species is the favorite food of giant pandas. It is also my cat's favorite plant to eat; and since she weighs about eight pounds (3.5 kg or so), I think she must have delusions of grandeur. (She likes to eat all the plants except the hemlock (smart cat :), the hinoki cypress, and the catnip that I got just for her.) I'm trying to keep things that look strongly Asian to minimum; I want people to look at the garden and say not "Oh! How Japanese!" but "Oh, how serene and pleasant!". I think that in such a small space, I have to be very careful about this. But I had to have one bamboo: I kept thinking about that quote (which you know better than I): "Without food, people become hungry, but without bamboo, they become vulgar." Thanks, Evelyn

Hi dottyinduncan, For Phyllostachys, dig a trench 6-8 inches deep, 10-12 inches if you are overly paranoid. A shovel width is sufficient, wider if you wish. As the bamboo grows rhizome you will see them breaking ground/poking through into the trench. Simply cut them off before they re-enter the ground. Semiaurundinarias will usually run deeper so allow a few inches extra for them. A couple of real nice Phyllostachys that don't grow rhizomes as fast as some of the others are Phyllostachys viridis 'Robert Young' and 'Houzeau', both very attractive and both relatively slow runners (in our climate). Both have a long branching habit so allow adequate space. Moso would be another consideration as it is slow slow slow.

For 2 years we've been trying to make our Yellow Groove Bamboo happy, but we're about to give up. Both Springs so far, almost all the leaves and canes (is that the right word?) have been brown and dead. The plants put out new canes and leaves as the weather warms up, but they don't grow any higher than about 3 feet, and they don't spread. They are planted at 5200-ft. altitude in the foothills outside of SLC, on the north side of the house. They get morning sun in the summer and the rest of the year, no sun at all. We get strong winds in this canyon; I wonder if that's the problem. We love bamboo and wanted the plants in this particular location to grow tall and provide screening, but perhaps we have to move the bamboo to a more protected, sunnier area?? Any advice would be appreciated.