Clumping vs. Running Bamboo

Which type is right for your yard? Here's how running and clumping bamboo compare for screening, climate, and control.

Which provides the best screen?

Running bamboo

Running bamboo can create a serene privacy screen or a beautiful grove to walk through. With easy maintenance, runners form a dense, very vertical natural screen — effective even in narrow urban planting sites.

Clumping bamboo

Clumpers leave a lot to be desired for screening: they're narrow at the base and weep over at the tops, leaving big gaps between plantings. Below is clumping bamboo planted in zone 8 back in the early 1950s.

Where can they grow?

Running bamboo

There are running species for nearly every climate zone — from the cold of Zone 5 to the warmth of the tropics.

Clumping bamboo

Clumpers are very limited in where they grow, even though there are cold-hardy and tropical varieties. Cold-hardy clumpers (mostly mountain bamboo) tolerate only a narrow band of zones and take years to reach 8–12 feet. In zones 7 and warmer they struggle and usually die from summer heat and humidity; in colder climates they do fine if you want a slow grower that matures around 8–12 feet.

Tropical clumpers grow only in very warm zones (8–9). They're giants and can grow fast like runners, but the canes are spaced so tightly that most specimens look unsightly, packed with dead canes and limbs in the interior that can't be reached without cutting away the outer canes first. A grove of running bamboo is unparalleled — and we've seen thousands over 50-plus years.

Here's Bambusa multiplex ‘Alphonse Karr’ in zone 7. It generally returns in spring if the winter isn't too severe — but most of the U.S. is zone 7 or colder, so expect similar or worse. With clumpers in marginal zones, the question isn't if they'll die, it's when. These were replaced with temperate running bamboo and the customer has been worry-free ever since. For an evergreen privacy screen, running bamboo is the best option.

How can I control them?

Running bamboo

Control is simple, with many methods available. Mowing your lawn as usual, plus root-pruning twice a year around the grove perimeter, is the most common. For near-maintenance-free control we recommend our plastic root barrier, Bamboo Shield — customers have relied on it for almost two decades.

Clumping bamboo

Clumping bamboo is almost impossible to fully control, though it doesn't spread far or fast. It's less aggressive but forceful about where it grows, and in-ground barriers have a harder time containing it. Because of that force, we recommend our thickest barrier, Bamboo Shield, 100 mil × 36″. Never plant a clumping species right next to a foundation or concrete driveway.