BAMBOO AND LANDSCAPE REMEDIATION

Bamboo can be used for landscape repair by installing it as a windbreak, creating dense screens, and/or using its culms for garden However it requires careful management to control its growth, especially for running types that have a place in this context. 

Landscaping services and businesses pitched at urban households can help with bamboo-related projects. From design and installation to maintenance such services can offer the kind of support and expertise households needs.

However when it come to civic engineering it is evident that in Australia generally the dominant imperative is the maintenance of the status quo despite all the inherent short falls. Since colonisation Australian landscapes have been managed exploitively in the context of the needs of the colonisers as has colonised landscapes the world over. So, consequential to the ongoing depletion of CULTURALlandscapes resourcefulness, the CLIMATEemergency and its consequences in the here and now there are urgent needs to be addressed. Bamboo, along with others plants, endemic and introduced, will inevitably be needed if these needs are to be addressed appropriately.

Peter Andrews OAM, Author of "Back from the Brink" t6o do with Natural Sequence Farming has blased an exemplary trail for landscape managers to follow in landscape manament and especially so in respect to the hydration of landscapes. Peter Andrews controversially used 'willow' in his work and in much the same way bamboo might well be used. 

Both willow and bamboo have their detractors and in every case these plants can be managed to mitigate their assume invasiveness. Both willow and bamboo have a fodder value and where they are endemic thier value as a source of biomass, fuel and charcoal make them attractive candidates for elements in a landscape remediation strategy.

Albeit that there might not yet be an example of a precedent landscape restoration project in Australia that employs bamboo, that is not to say bamboo does not fit the circumstance.

As Peter Andrews used willow, bamboo would and could be an element in the hydration of a landscape and especially so in steep landscapes. Peter Andrews didn't advocate "willow", rather he spoke of "plants" and the role they play. It was his detractors who called out his 'willow use' given willow's WEEDstatus. In many ways bamboo's utility in landscape remediation exceeds willow's. 

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Bamboo grows faster than willow and sequester more carbon more quickly. Also, has decades of harvesting potetial while it delivers its ECOdividends – that is fibre, food, fuel and opportunity. While it is tempting to market bamboo as the SILVERbullet that will eclipse all other agents for landscape remediation 'the plant' needs to be understood in a holistic context so as not to attribute it with mystical values.

As va consequence of mining activity, landfill sites and civic works generally there is a need to remediate landscapes. Indeed, in civic context there is a pressing need to end landfill as means of disposing of POSTconsumer resources. Also, the need to remediate the sites is equally pressing and given bamboo's ecological credentials, the plant has great potential in this work.

Civilization is much more than the survival of the fittest and the unrelenting culling of the weakest members and the unsustainable exploitation of the planet's resources. Civilized people share a value system that extends far beyond doing whatever it takes to survive. Barbarians might be devoted to a life of exploitation. Bamboo ranks highly among the plants that Australia's government – national, state, regional & local – misunderstand and misrepresent.

CULTURALlandscaping is something we all do all the time. It is a 'doing word' albeit that there are planners and civic functionaries who hold that it not. The economies that sustain communities [LINK] depend upon are entirely dependant upon how communities shape and make places. It how 'placedness' comes about.