Digging Up a Giant Blue Bamboo (Borinda 1046): A Tough Garden Job

Every now and then, a garden project comes along that you know will be hard work. This week was one of those moments in my garden: the day finally came to dig up my big blue bamboo, Borinda 1046.

This magnificent bamboo has been growing in this spot since 2018, forming a dense clump of thick, upright canes that reach around five metres tall. It started life as a small division from another clump, but over the past eight years it has grown into an impressive specimen.

As beautiful as it is, the time has come to move it.

Why Remove the Bamboo?

Right now, the bamboo dominates the entire view of this part of the garden. When you stand here, it’s almost all you can see.

The long-term plan is to open up this area:

• Create a clear view down to the jungle hut

• Turn this section into a large lawn area

• Replant the bamboo divisions elsewhere in the garden

• Sell some divisions to other bamboo enthusiasts

But first, the bamboo has to come out—and that’s easier said than done.

Step 1: Cutting the Bamboo Back

Before attempting to dig it up, I cut the bamboo down to about two to two and a half metres tall—roughly my height.

This step is important.

When you dig up a plant, you inevitably sever many of its roots, which means it can’t take up water as efficiently. If the plant still has a huge amount of foliage, it can quickly lose more moisture than the roots can replace.

By removing roughly 80% of the foliage, the plant has a much better chance of surviving once it's been divided and replanted.

And there was a lot of foliage.

Most of the leaves grow on the upper and middle parts of the canes, so cutting off the top three metres removed the majority of it in one go.

Step 2: The Real Work Begins

With the bamboo trimmed down, it was time to start digging.

And this is where things got serious.

Bamboo is never particularly easy to dig up, but Borinda 1046 is especially tough. Unlike many running bamboos, it’s a clumping bamboo. The rhizomes are short and compact rather than spreading runners, but they are incredibly thick and solid.

In fact, the canes and rhizomes are not hollow like many other bamboos—they’re dense and extremely hard to cut through.

I started digging around the base with my tools:

• A Root Slayer spade

• Pruners

• An old saw

• A plaster cutting saw for stubborn roots

Despite all that, progress was painfully slow.

A Surprise Below the Soil

One of the things that made this bamboo particularly difficult was how deep the rhizomes were.

With many bamboos, most of the important rhizomes are within the top 10–15 cm of soil.

Not this one.

The main rhizomes were sitting 20–30 cm below the surface, which meant digging far deeper than expected before even reaching the parts that needed cutting.

The Tool That Finally Worked

After struggling for quite some time, only one tool really did the job: my old reciprocating saw.

I’ve had it for over a decade, and it finally proved its worth here.

The first two blades actually snapped immediately (they were old and worn), so I had to make a quick trip into town to buy new ones. With a fresh blade installed, I was finally able to cut through the rhizomes and free a couple of divisions.

Even then, it took hours of work just to extract a few pieces.

The First Divisions

Eventually, I managed to remove a couple of viable divisions.

One piece had:

• A healthy section of rhizome

• Strong roots

• Stored energy ready to produce new shoots

Another division had almost no foliage at all, but plenty of root energy underground. With bamboo, that’s often enough—the plant can push out new shoots from the rhizome.

I even found a failed cane from last year that had started developing a small rhizome and roots. I’ll pot that up as well, just in case it decides to grow.

A Job Far From Finished

After several hours of digging, cutting, levering, and sweating, I had only managed to remove a small portion of the clump.

And there’s still a lot left to dig.

This is definitely a multi-day project.

Lesson Learned

If there’s one lesson from this job, it’s this:

Think carefully about where you plant large clumping bamboos like Borinda.

They are stunning plants with incredible structure and colour—especially with those beautiful blue canes—but once established, they are extremely difficult to move.

So plant them somewhere you’re happy for them to stay.

Because digging them up later is, quite frankly…

a serious workout.