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In the realm of landscaping, the quest for materials that combine beauty, profitability, and ease of installation is ongoing. At Almaville Bamboo, we understand the intricacies of your work and the challenges you face, from managing costs to ensuring the longevity and aesthetic appeal of your installations. Bamboo offers a unique solution, and we’re here to show you how in this comprehensive guide for professionals.
This resource is especially beneficial for installers considering bamboo as a highly profitable alternative to traditional screening materials. While the information provided may cover basic concepts, we’ve included nuanced insights to enrich the knowledge base of even the most seasoned professionals.
Simply observing the landscape in Middle Tennessee reveals the challenge: evergreen trees marked by dead spots due to disease or inadequate soil conditions, exacerbated by the omnipresent rock just beneath the surface. This condition often leads to planting failures and gaps in growth, necessitating costly follow-up service to satisfy the client, sometimes even beyond the guarantee period.
Choosing bamboo offers the following advantages:
For professionals, these advantages translate into:
Bamboo beats trees hands-down. But if you’re new to bamboo, you might be skeptical. And you might be asking…
Return visits can rapidly deplete the profitability of a project due to expenses related to equipment, labor, fuel, and plant replacement.
When you send a client to our farm, you can rest assured that we’ll handle them with care, respect your relationship, and refer them back to you if they ask about installation, design, containers, etc.
If they ask about installation, we answer simple questions or refer them to the various resources on website. But anything regarding in-ground installs requiring barrier, we’ll refer them back to you, explaining that heavy machinery, trenchers, underground utilities, etc. make your expertise worth it’s weight in gold.
If they request a home consultation, we’ll stick to bamboo, and carefully avoid broaching anything that might interfere with your design.
We work hard to honor the trust you give us when you send one of our clients. And this has worked well for over two decades of successfully maintaining pro partnerships.
Unlike other plant nurseries who sell plants AND offer installation services…
We’ll deliver the bamboo to your customer’s location, but our services stop at the curb. We offer no installation or landscaping design services of any kind. This key part of our business model is crucial to maintaining long term relationships with all of our pro partners.
It’s YOUR customer and we’ll work hard to protect that relationship.
If you’re comfortable with the idea of sending your clients to our bamboo nursery to examine the various plantings and learn about the various control methods available, then you probably want to know how we ensure the plants that your customer buys are pristine.
At Almaville Bamboo Company, we go to great lengths to ensure the health of the plants we deliver and the satisfaction of consumers after the sale. Here’s a detailed description of our entire process.
The prettiest plants aren’t always the best choice for your customer, so we start here. We’ll advise and guide them to selecting plants that will flourish based on the conditions of their location.
Customers often select plants based on above-ground characteristics, assuming these reflect the plant’s overall health and suitability. However, with bamboo, the root system’s condition is far more critical for future growth.
Our nursery focuses on ensuring the integrity of the bamboo’s root ball, whether it’s potted or wrapped, to guarantee successful transplantation and growth.
For those interested in plant quantity and installation advice, we provide detailed recommendations based on the intended screening effect and plant size. We address common concerns such as soil amendment and mulching, explaining why bamboo differs from other plantings and how to achieve optimal growth conditions. Finally, we also offer insight and guidance regarding the unique aspects of bamboo care and installation without interfering with your design plans.
Our proven extraction process starts with the soil type at our bamboo farm, heavy clay, which provides ideal conditions for growing, extracting, and transporting bamboo.
While heavy clay may not be the best medium for all of your client’s landscaping needs, it certainly is for our bamboo. The most important thing about what leaves this nursery is the integrity of the root ball, whether in a pot or balled in burlap. Our heavy clay allows the ball to “stick” together as your men and ours carefully work with it.
Our extraction process relies on precision and strength, using specialized equipment and techniques to preserve the delicate rhizomes essential for future growth. This attention to detail is why do-it-yourself attempts often fail and highlights the importance of professional installation. This is one of those places where reputation becomes so important. To a great degree, the purchaser must rely on the reputation of the grower to know whether the plants were properly removed from the ground. The buds on the rhizome are what cause future growth. They are very tender and can easily be broken off. That is why “flea market finds” may be alive, but not produce well.
Our razor sharp 12 gauge steel shovels driven swiftly by 200+ pound workers with steel shanked boots cut crisply through the rhizomes. Picture what would happen to a smaller man bouncing up and down trying to repeatedly cut through a springy rhizome. The rhizome would be dragged up and down through the soil before ultimately being cut, knocking off most of the buds in the process. Technique is one reason most DIY people are not particularly successful in doing this job themselves.
After extraction, our extra large plants or our timber plants are packaged in a metal basket. The adult screening plants are balled in burlap, or 16″ diameter pots and rely to a great degree on the texture of the soil to stay intact. If the soil in the grove is loose or gravelly, the root ball will not thrive, even if it survives.
Aftercare, including critical irrigation measures immediately after extraction, ensure the plants remain hydrated and healthy until they’re securely planted in their new location. Within hours of being dug, all plants are either on drip emitters or overhead sprinklers. We do not allow the burlap to become a wick for the moisture inside the ball for more than a day at a time in the warm season. These measures are followed from the moment they are extracted until they are delivered.
After delivery, we provide customers with Bamboo Planting & Care Instructions, a 6-Month Healthy Plant Guarantee, and our team of bamboo specialists provide ongoing support via phone, email, and text messaging.
Our 4-step process has been refined over two decades to provide excellent results for customers and foster rock-solid pro partner relationships.
Pro partners enjoy the following benefits:
First, we follow your lead. If you already know what you want the client to use in terms of numbers of plants, please advise us.
Otherwise we suggest typical plant density of:
The most frequently asked question is whether the soil should be amended prior to planting. From your standpoint, the answer is “no”. If you put a 20′ tall plant in loose soil, you can imagine what that will do in the first strong wind or ice storm. On the other hand, if you pack soil tightly around the burlap of a 7-11′ plant, you won’t have to go back to reinstall it. Be sure not to step on the root ball! Unlike a tree, you can bury this a little deeper than the root ball for more stability if necessary. Proper mulching and a few earthworms will accomplish virtually the same thing as soil amendment next year, allowing the rhizomes to take hold and support the plant beautifully. Mulch- Another place where bamboo is different from a tree. There is no bark, and the skin has a silica impregnated tough outer layer. You can bring the mulch up to the plant without concern of disease. 5-6 inches of any mulch will do. Grass clippings, leaves, wood chips, pine straw- most anything except hot manure. You want NO nitrogen on these plants for 4-5 months. You need thick mulch to retain consistent soil moisture and temperatures for the first year or so. If the plants are going into an area which holds water for more than a day, you need to either change species or better yet, build a berm to get it started
Most screening plants will be a bit irregular in shape since they are hand dug and will be roughly 13” diameter and about one foot deep. XL screening plants and most “Standard” timber species are dug with a 30 degree tree spade set at 18 inches- b in b in steel wire baskets. 2” caliber timber species are set at 20”. The auger on your skid steer will make short work. However, the standard screening plant holes are usually small enough to be hand dug.
If you are not familiar with this part of the process, we have everything you need including advice on the subject.
If a barrier is being installed, the trench should be 24” deep where possible. The barrier is on 30” rolls, so this would leave 3” exposed assuming 3” of mulch (total 6”). This is important so that rhizomes don’t “skip” over the top of the barrier.
If this is a one sided perimeter planting, that is all that is needed. If it is a complete enclosure, we have strapping kits available to clamp the overlapping ends. If you are going to have to rent a trencher to install barrier, an articulating Dingo trencher which allows an almost vertical digging bar can be used to dig the holes, too.
One-Sided Perimeter – If this is a one sided perimeter planting, that is all that is needed.
Complete Enclosure – If it is a complete enclosure, we have strapping kits available to clamp the overlapping ends.
Specific Trencher Suggestions – If you are going to have to rent a trencher to install barrier, an articulating Dingo trencher which allows an almost vertical digging bar can be used to dig the holes, too.
If the client is an aggressive gardener, you can help them get extremely creative, and can modify both horizontally and vertically on an annual basis. Four dramatically different shapes of the same species obtained by grooming can be seen in the video on our “Containers” page.
From a simple grove, you can progress to an elaborate setting.
Check out Charles Mann Photography’s bamboo in Kyoto Gardens for an example of what your client could have you create over several years. This photo is of a drastically thinned grove probably of “Robert Young” with fabulous under-plantings and sculpting.
Maintenance contracts advice: Bamboo can be a very low maintenance planting for you, but there are ways to suggest an annual checkup if you aren’t already seeing the client for other maintenance programs. Fertilizing is optional, but if the client doesn’t start with a complete screen, and instead is allowing it to gradually grow together, then fertilizing will speed that up. Don’t remove even ugly new growth in that case, and do not dig any material from the grove for at least 4 years unless you are trying to reduce propagation. If the planting is to be set at a specific height like a hedge, you will want to trim it once a year after the shoots have exceeded the desired height, but before they have hardened off. Examples can be seen on our videos or ask us at the nursery.
Maintenance contracts offer a pathway to ensure the longevity and health of the bamboo installation, with optional fertilization to accelerate growth and specific trimming guidelines to maintain desired aesthetics.
If you’re not ready to join, and would like to send a question, click here to send us a message and please tell us what we can do to make your task easier or more profitable.
Our family-owned nursery is dedicated to supporting your success and building lasting partnerships. We welcome any questions or requests for assistance to make your projects more profitable and satisfying.
To give you an idea of what you can carry, we typically load 25 Adult Screening Plants in a long bed pickup truck or 20 in a 6-1/2′ bed. You can get 80-85 plants on a double axle 16 foot trailer.
You will need a tailgate or ramps or need to build some elevation on the back of your trailer.
If you don’t have a tarp, we can cover the plants for you- we have successfully had plants make it to Colorado, Maryland, Michigan and Florida covered with carpet backing or “Leno.”
If you expect your order to be greater than 20 plants, please call ahead so we can be sure of availability of your particular species. We prefer to stabilize the newly dug plants for 2 weeks.
