Planting flowers can look nice, but it will do nothing to inhibit the spread of running bamboo. In addition, cutting it back only leaves the rhizomes intact and they will just keep on spreading. If you want to control your bamboo, you need to maintain a perimeter with regular root pruning and/or bamboo barrier.

I planted Lavender Verbena around my bamboo in 2012. The reason I did is because the bamboo had not filled in the area encompassed by the barrier so I wanted to fill the blank space. Lavender Verbena is an annual here but grows like a weed so it filled in fast. But in the fall I pulled it out and in 2013 the bamboo filled the area in so there was no room to plant, I suspect if the verbena was a perennial here the bamboo would have choked it out anyway, blocking the sun and eventually killing it.

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