Nepalese Blue Bamboo Himalayacalamus porcatus Nepalese Blue

Nepalese Blue is a mountain bamboo, and it brings two things most garden bamboos lack: colour in the canes and a real liking for cool weather. New culms come up dusted with a powdery blue white bloom over finely ridged stems, then age through green towards yellow green as the wax wears away, so a clump a few years old shows several shades at once. The canes are slender, the leaves small and fine, and the tops arch outward, which gives the clump a soft, weeping outline rather than the stiff poles of the big tropical bamboos.

The second reason it gets planted is that it clumps. The rhizomes are short and turn upward into new canes close to the existing clump, so it widens slowly from where it is planted instead of running under fences and paving the way running bamboos do. A clump stays tight enough for a bed along a side fence, and tall enough to screen above a standard fence line without becoming a tree.

Cool, moist and out of the hot wind

In the wild it grows in cool, moist mountain forest in the Himalaya, and it does well in Australian gardens that come close to that. Melbourne and its hills, the Adelaide Hills, Canberra and the New South Wales tablelands suit it, and established clumps handle hard frost, though the coldest tableland pockets can push it to its limit. In mild, cool districts it takes full sun. In Canberra and inland, and in Sydney and other warm districts, give it afternoon shade and shelter from hot summer winds and north westerlies, which scorch and curl the fine leaves. Humid tropical and subtropical heat is a struggle for it, so Brisbane and the north are better served by a warm climate bamboo.

The honest drawback is thirst. This bamboo resents drying out, and the first sign is leaves rolling into tight tubes on a hot afternoon. A clump that goes repeatedly dry thins out, browns at the leaf tips and stops sending up the new blue culms that are the whole point of it. In a pot that means watering daily through summer heat; in the ground, deep watering two or three times a week through the first two summers, then weekly in dry spells. Expect some leaf drop too. Like other evergreen bamboos it sheds old leaves steadily, most heavily in spring, so keep it back from gutters and pools.

A bamboo among the palms

It sits in the Palm Trees collection because it does a similar job in a design: vertical, evergreen and soft in the wind. Dendrocalamus minor amoenus, the ghost bamboo, is its warm climate counterpart, a much taller and thicker caned clumper with chalky, striped culms that likes full sun and handles subtropical heat. For a shaded courtyard in a warm district, Bamboo Palm gives a similar cane and leaf effect, though it is a true palm with little frost tolerance.

Thin the old canes to keep the blue

Bamboo is a grass and responds to nitrogen. Feed in spring and again in midsummer with a slow release fertiliser high in nitrogen, or a lawn food watered in well, and mulch thickly with compost. Let fallen bamboo leaves stay on the soil as extra mulch. Thinning is what keeps the colour on show. Each late winter, cut the oldest, dullest culms out at ground level with a sharp saw, which opens the clump and lets light reach the new blue canes. Never cut emerging shoots, and strip the lowest side branches if you want the culms themselves on display.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 2 sizes, from 300mm up to 400mm, priced from $169.00 to $429.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. Every size here is established stock rather than a starter plant, so this line is intended for immediate effect rather than for growing on. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to when to plant in Australia.