Underplanting Bamboos

[AndyC]

I have found it difficult to find plants happy to grow around and through clumps of bamboo, the soil can be quite dry and densely packed with roots.
Those I have found are shallow rooted and seem to cope well with the competition.
This clump of Thamnocalamus crassinodus 'Key Beauty' has a Saxifrage groing on its shady side and Colocasia 'Pink China' on the sunny side
20210722_075401 by Andy Cowlishaw, on Flickr
20210722_075343 by Andy Cowlishaw, on Flickr
These plants also don't seem to mind having manure thrown over them in the autumn.
Not so happy about the manure but chosen for its colour contrast and drought tolerance is this Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' growing through the clump of Borinda papyrifer
20210721_085948 by Andy Cowlishaw, on Flickr
Do any of you have other plants you use in these situations?

[charlie]

Gosh, looks good, never occurred to me to try! I shall to give it some thought now

[Paul S]

Does look very effective. Without extra irrigation I struggle with a lot of bamboos, let alone underplant them! Most often the new culms initiate and start to push up but then abort as the summer drought bites. Some do better than others - Fargesia robusta doesn't seem to care but a couple of big Phyylostachys sulk if they don't get soaked. Worst culprit is Borinda lushiensis. Shame I haven't got a natural lake for it to grow in the side of like at Tregrehan. :lol:

As an aside, I left a Colocasia 'Pink China' in my pond last winter by way of an experiment and it has really done well despite being water logged. Took about -4C, ice on the pond etc. Started into growth nice and early, unlike most of the pond plants, ad has made fabulous progress so far this year.

[charlie]

I presume it went dormant Paul? so what sort of water depth was over the crown?

[Paul S]

yes, frost knocked back the above water bits completely. The rest was under just a little bit of water - barely covering the mesh pot.

I don't know if it helps at all but the water is kept moving - I read that colocasias enjoy moving water so I hatched a plan :) if you can imagine this, I have an old cold water tank inside the pond in which is a pump that supplies one of those foam fountains, although it hasn't foamed for some years, more of a dribble these days. Sounds famliar, somehow... :D On top of the pump and filling the tank are mesh bags of 20mm gravel with the foam nozzle thingy sticking up the middle. My plan was to use it as an 'in-pond' filter with water being drawn through the gravel but it just really circulates in itself without having much impact on the rest of the pond. But what it seems to do is trap a lot of gunk. I nestled the 'Pink China' mesh pot into the bags of gravel so it was approx at water level. My guess is the roots left the mesh pot some while back and have infiltrated the gravel, feeding on the gunk. I need to go in there and rescue some of the offsets as it seems set on sending out runners all over the place.