Why are we so passionate about bamboos place in hot dry summer climates, like zone 9? The list is long, but distinguished, and summarized here…

• Bamboo keeps you cool: bamboo plants provide magnificent and beautiful protection from heat and direct sun. Bamboo shades (either partially or fully) and cools by keeping the scorching summer sun off you, your buildings, your animals, your???.
• Bamboo is a drought tolerant reservoir of water: bamboo stores a massive amount of water just below the surface of your soil, in an equally massive, erosion resistant network of roots, cooling the surrounding air. Bamboo acts as a reservoir by collecting and storing large amounts of water in its rhizomes and stems during rainy season, and returns water to the soil during droughts.
• Bamboo both shades and cools: bamboos structure allows airflow to pass while simultaneously providing sanctuary from the suns rays. Bamboo grown for shade can perform shading miracles.
• Bamboo is a “SUPER PLANT” for the environment: bamboo creates 35% more oxygen than a a comparable tree, and reaches maturity in just 1-3 years.
• Bamboo is a “SUPER PLANT” for the environment part II: compared with planting a pine tree, bamboo absorbs 5 times more Carbon Dioxide (Co2) from your air.
• To love birds, is to love bamboo: small birds flock to bamboo. The myriad songs of an incalculable number of migrating sparrows amongst the bamboo, small framed against towering culms…
• Bamboo plays wonderfully with Aloe and Lavender: their watering needs are different, but both aloe vera and bamboo thrive together in full sun. Aloe vera can be planted on the periphery of a bamboo plant, or on the angled edge of a bamboo plants watering moat, thus receiving less (but consistent) moisture. Bamboo adds stature and elegance to small succulents and shrubs in a zone 9 garden.
• Bamboo creates magically beautiful and fully custom screens: unlike a typical fence which blocks your views, bamboo can be tactically pruned to block the outside world (or an unsightly view, of say your trashcans) while allowing your views from within to remain. and last but not the least…
• Bamboo growing in a hot dry climate is simply beautiful: while many plants wilt and suffer in summer heat, many drought tolerant bamboos simply thrive in heat. Bamboo culms in a full zone 9 sun often reach spectacular towering heights, producing stunningly verdant and dense screens of foliar beauty, at nearly every height from ground to sky. Bamboos lush foliar greenery contrasts beautifully and elegantly with the typically drier zone 9 garden.

So the why of bamboo here in zone 9 is clear. Bamboo is a plant that has helped us appreciate even scorching hot summers, by providing solace and sanctuary from the heat. Further, once you replace the fear of bamboo with empathy & understanding, you learn bamboo’s remarkable beauty and usefulness need not be feared at all. Turns out it is actually remarkably simple to keep bamboo “contained” and easily manageable, simply by planting a CLUMPING variety like Oldhamii. Or if it is a magical screen of Golden Bamboo (or any running variety) you seek; then manage it with a simple root barrier, or by knowing bamboo stops where water stops, or by any other of the 4,860,000 results well documented under a google search of “containing running bamboo.”

Bamboo: replace fear with empathy