The Bamboo Garden was designed and planted by former OSU horticulture professor Martin Quigley and was made possible by Bill Hendricks of Klyn Nurseries, who donated the plant materials for the garden.
The enclosed space of the garden provides a perfect way to enjoy some of the more aggressively spreading bamboos while preventing them from invading the rest of the gardens. The garden showcases the wide range of bamboos hardy in central Ohio.
Bamboos are lovely groups of plants that deserve to be planted more widely in our gardens. This collection includes a wonderfully diverse range of sizes, leaf shapes, and colors. Tall bamboos can provide evergreen screening and wind breaks, dwarf bamboos are excellent ground covers for difficult sites, and all bring a unique tropical Asian feel to the garden.
Bamboos are generally tough, drought-tolerant, adaptable plants, and have been absolutely pest and disease free in this garden. When planting a bamboo, be sure to plan for its eventual mature size. A bamboo may take up to ten years from first planting to reach its final height. This also means many of the larger bamboos in our collection have not yet reached their mature size, and will continue to grow much taller in the next 5 years.