If you want to give a touch of beauty to your garden, turn to the East for ideas and add some bamboo. There are hundreds of types, and as many ways to use bamboo to accent your garden. Bamboo looks great as border edging, lattice fences and stakes for flowers and vegetables.

Random edging of thick, dark brown, 6- to 12-inch moso bamboo (

) shows off plants and flowers. You can buy the edging or make your own by drilling holes on each side of the bamboo and connecting the pieces with heavy, galvanized wire. Drive the end pieces into the ground. Thick-walled, high-quality tropical bamboo in lawn borders can also prevent grass from trespassing into gardens or walkways.

Making a tepee to support beans or other vertical plants is easy. Choose three pieces of 7-foot bamboo and gather them at the top, tying them with dark twine. Beans and peas will grow best on your bamboo tepee. Just make sure the beans you buy are runner or pole beans.

There are many different shapes and sizes of trellises, including lattice panels that work well for climbing roses, clematis and other climbing vines. The panels come in various sizes, including 1-1/2 by 6 feet, 3 by 6 feet and 6 by 6, the most common size. Connect them or use them free-standing.

Screen fences and see-throughs can be used to partition gardens or border walkways. You can define a smaller garden space by attaching bamboo screen fencing to a side fence. A water feature could be a focal point of the small area marked off by bamboo.

If bamboo has continuous contact with the soil, it will rot after two or three years, so use hardwood posts for ground-contact supports, or put rebar in the ground with a bamboo sleeve over it. If the bamboo won't slide far enough over the rebar, you'll have to hammer out one or more bamboo nodes. Use the rebar to pierce the nodes; a good technique is to stand on a staircase so you can hammer the metal straight down from the top. Then slide the bamboo over the rebar.

Apply natural preservatives, such as hemp oil or tung oil. With care, your bamboo fence will last for years. Without care, it will age and split with constant weathering.

Expect bamboo to turn a light, weathered gray as it ages. Bamboo canes will crack through expansion and contraction, but that won't diminish their strength.

Cut the top of any bamboo cane using a bamboo saw. You can use it vertically or diagonally just above the nearest joint. The interior membrane at the joint will help keep water from collecting in the hollow cane.

-- Homes & Gardens staff

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