Is green bamboo good for building?

A visitor to our website wrote:
I love your website! I have a question. You mention that you have green, just cut, bamboo. Can you actually make fences, etc from green bamboo or do you have to wait for it to dry out? I’m just thinking that if I buy and plant bamboo, I’d like to know whether I could build furniture with it as soon as it’s tall enough. Thanks!

My response:
Freshly cut bamboo will turn tan as it dries and it dries rather quickly, usually within a few months. It can certainly be used for building when green but, like any wood, as it dries, there is shrinkage. If you use freshly cut bamboo canes you'll need to factor that into your calculations.

Bamboo orchid hangers

A customer in Florida wrote:
Thank you so much for the nice bamboo poles which I received today, and for the two extra poles especially. They are just perfect for my needs!

As I promised, I will take pictures of completed orchid hangers and email them to you.

I am glad that I found your business through Google.

Customers Share Bamboo Project Photos

Bamboo poles are frequently used to build wedding arches, trellises and tiki huts but that's not all they're good for. Below are a few of the many creations built by our customers. If you have a bamboo creation you'd like to share, email me a few pictures and description of your project and I'll add it to the blog.

Beautiful Bamboo customer Robert Peterson emailed three photos of his recent bamboo projects.  In the below two pictures, he used half-round 2" bamboo poles to trim both an exterior and interior door.  

 

Peterson also used half-rounds together with smaller diameter poles to create a tropical looking wainscoting. 

 










Nadine from Custom Costumes & Entertainment Productions in Rhode Island used our homegrown bamboo poles to create an unusual promotional display:

Thanks again for you help in making this happen.. It was a big hit the car show.. It seems people still love Planet of the Apes.. As much as we do..



Natalia, an orchid-loving customer from Wesley Chaple, FL, used bamboo as a base for her plants:

For mounting orchids I drilled the poles and put 16 gauge galvanized wire. I formed hooks by myself. Then I used thread (cotton) to fix orchid moss and coconut fibers. That was it. As you see, this is a very simple construction.

Dave Schmid, carpentry foreman for the Freeman Company, emailed photos of a booth commissioned by Tata Consultancy Services that included a number of our freshly cut bamboo poles:





Amelia Island customers, Chris and Dick Modie, emailed to say:

We thought you would like to see our handy work!! The live bamboo is doing great too.

Below are photos of the beautiful outdoor shade room Dick and Chris constructed from a combination of bamboo poles, 1/2" diameter bamboo roll fencing and reed fencing.



Two views of the shade room as viewed from the front.





The roof was made out of two different lengths of 1/2" bamboo roll fencing (4' x 6' and 4' x 8') supported by a framework of 2" and 3" diameter poles.



The end view showcases the reed fencing stretched and supported by 2" and 3" diameter bamboo poles.

Another customer, Fred Partin writes:

I thought you would like to see how we used your bamboo (2" half rounds) to go with our new Chinese chairs in living room.



David Marshak constructed a wedding chuppah out of 3" uprights and 2" horizontal poles:



Greg Lorentz built this tiki-style bar for his deck:



Michael Ryan creates beautiful cases out of bamboo to hold his handmade seashell flutes. Learn more at his website Seashell Music



This is an upstairs room in our house where we've covered a knee wall with reed fencing and trimmed it out with 2" half-rounds.

A customer wrote:
Hi Sherry, it was great meeting you and Ralph yesterday. Dianna was so right to get different varieties to plant around the property! The giant timber looks so cool.. I love it. We have a spot for every one of the bamboo we got and planted 3 of them last evening. I dug a huge wide and deep hole to plant the big bamboo and filled it with 2 large wheel barrels of mulch. Here is a pic of it.



I poked out the piece of dry bamboo and made a didgeridoo it sounds good but i think i need to get the tube cleaned out a little better to make it sound louder.

Thanks, Doug and Dianna

My response:
I'm glad it worked out so well. Remember that even after the bamboos are planted, you can always apply top dressings of organic matter (a good use for all of your horse's manure) around the bamboos. You will be seeing lots of new shoots emerge over the next few months so take pictures now when they're relatively small or you won't remember how they looked. Thank you for choosing Beautiful Bamboo and have fun watching your baby 'boos grow!

How fast does bamboo grow?

People are always asking us how quickly bamboo grows. Below are photos sent from customers in the Orlando area whose objective was to create a perimeter privacy barrier in front of existing fences. See for yourself how quickly a landscape can change less than a year after planting bamboo.



Green Hedge clumping bamboo (3-gallon size) planted 4' apart in May 2008.



11 months later...where did that fence go?



Same property - another location. Same type of bamboo, same size container planted the same distance apart.



11 months later - after only one growing season - the white fence is beginning to disappear behind a screen of green bamboo.