Product Description

For gardeners who are keen to establish the best performers for different situations and for specialists interested in the detail behind the bamboo, this guide offers all that is needed to provide the garden with the glossy stems, lush foliage, rustling movement and very fast growth of this unique plant.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #409526 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-24
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

If you have any interest in Bamboos, you NEED this book.
This is the book that Bamboo enthusiasts have been waiting for for thirty - plus years ! It is not a stuffy academic book, but rather a goldmine of information, beautifully presented and lavishly illustrated. The author (who is the president of the British Bamboo Society and a co-holder of the UK's National Collection of Phyllostachys) is supremely knowledgeable, but at the same time warm and lyrical. An absolute delight to read, and an invaluable reference source. This is set to become the 'bible' of bamboo culture.

A good all round reference book on Bamboo.
An interesting book that has a large A-Z section devoted to Bamboo species. The information includes important facts such as dimensions and cold hardiness, there are also sections devoted to showing variences and differences within bamboo cultivars. The only thing I feel that lets the book down is the A-Z section, where I feel individual species could have been better illustrated. This book also includes a glossary on places where one can buy bamboo and includes a list of Bamboo societies and further reading.

Too much of a personal view
It's not a bad book, but I have a few objections:
First, there's too many sentences like "I did this, a friend of mine did that, I was told..." and so on. I expected more facts, and less biographical moments.
Second, threre's too much emphasis on bamboo species I could hardly call temperate, like Drapanostachyum, Himalayacalamus, Chusquea. Theese species are suitable for subtropical or Mediterranean garden rather then for a temperate one.
Third, I can't remember ever reading in a gardening book things like "It's a second rate plant" The writer proclaimed the whole genus of Pleioblastus, and some others species as unwanted in a garden. I think that it's much better to illustrate the plants better, and leave up to a gardener to decide which plants he (or she) likes and which he does't like.