The Plants You Shouldn’t Plant in Your Yard
By Lisa Kaplan Gordon

 Bamboo

When you need a concrete bunker to contain a plant, you know you’re in trouble. Some varieties of bamboo are so determined to spread that only extreme measures, such as plastic or concrete root barriers, can keep its rhizomes from running from here to kingdom come. Running varieties include Chimono-bambusa, Indocalamus, Pleioblastus, and Sasa. Clumping varieties are much better behaved — Bambusa, Borinda, Chusquera, Fargesia, and Otatea grow and spread more slowly.