My neighbour's bamboo is costing me thousands... but he doesn't care - here's why

Daily Mail​

10-05-2025

It was once late night noise or disputed planning permission that were top of the neighbour row list. But now, an entirely new threat is plaguing homeowners' safety and sanity: bamboo.
Historically the hottest garden plant on the planet, designed for privacy or even just to make mundane lawns look slightly more exotic, one Australian resident has now shared the true horrors of the 'disruptive' and 'out of control' plant.
Paul Wilkinson, based in New South Wales, told Yahoo News that he has spent almost $3,000 attempting to reverse the damage of a bamboo plant that he says his neighbour first planted five years ago.
In that time, he claims it has nearly doubled in size, standing at nine metres tall and entirely overshadowing his two-storey home.
The worst part is that despite pleading with his neighbour to manage the invasive plant, who he claims often leaves his property vacant given it is a holiday home, Mr Wilkinson insists that he simply 'doesn't seem to care'.
And, as the flora continues to rapidly grow, Mr Wilkinson has been forced to deal with an abundance of bamboo leaves continually falling onto his footpath.
He even spent up to $12,000 on 29 solar panels on his roof that the large plant is now blocking, 'significantly limiting' his desired power bill savings.
Speaking to the publication about his frustration, Mr Wilkinson said that he had hoped his neighbour would be 'reasonable' after his last power pill came to 'almost a thousand dollars.'
He added: 'I understand he seeks some level of privacy, but the majority of the foliage is on the top third of the plant, so when I actually sit on my veranda, I can look straight through the bamboo at the pool anyway.
'If this was cut down, it would be at eye level to provide privacy.'
Mr Wilkinson insists that he asked his neighbour in June if they could discuss the bamboo being reduced to an acceptable height and, despite assurances from the neighbour that they would discuss it the next time he was present at the property, Mr Wilkinson has not seen or heard from him since.
Having exhausted all other options, the Australian homeowner has now paid nearly $3,000 in legal fees to submit an application to the Land and Environment Court in a bid to get the plant forcibly cut back.
Not just an issue for existing homeowners, but also for prospective buyers too, Mr Wilkinson's neighbour horror story comes as MailOnline recently spoke to a woman, who chose to remain anonymous, that discovered 350 square metres of bamboo growing underground when purchasing a new home in rural England.
After further probing the sellers she discovered the garden had previously been invaded with ten-metre-high bamboo. While they had a local contractor remove the plant, it is a complicated procedure that had not been done properly.
Instead, the bamboo had started to regrow and spread next door, a problem the new owner felt was intentionally being passed onto her.
So, before buying the property she decided to have a bamboo surveyor provide a quote for how much it would cost to remove all of the plant.
With a ten year maintenance it ended up being an eye-watering £11k, that involved five days of work.
Sharing her suspicions with MailOnline, she said: 'The owners knew [about the bamboo] but I think their plan was to sell it with the bamboo and not do anything about it.
'In my job I deal with places that have Japanese knotweed so I know what to look for.'
Emily Grant from Environet, an invasive plants management company, also told MailOnline how bamboo is becoming a 'huge problem' within the UK, with a '900 per cent increase in demand for bamboo-related work in the last three years '.
What's more, Ms Grant explained that there is a lack of awareness in the UK concerning the 'problematic' dangers of bamboo, with many still opting to use it as a tactic to block out surrounding properties.
Instead, homeowners are preoccupied with another invasive species: Japanese knotweed, with 73 per cent of people believing it is more harmful than bamboo.
Further highlighting the extent of possible damage caused by bamboo, Callum Hurst, director of C H Enviro, specialising in invasive plant removal, said:
'When you're dealing with bamboo rhizomes, it's a lot more aggressive and it's a lot more hardy and it can cause a lot more damage to concrete and it can manipulate those cracks a lot faster than Japanese knotweed.
'I've been dealing with Japanese Knotweed for about 13 years and there's only been a couple of cases where I've seen it cause structural damage.
'But with bamboo, it will tear up patios, it will break its way through waste pipes and damage underground services it can get into the footings of a building and the cavities it can start growing up in between the wall cavities.
'I've seen it spread from one garden to two properties down, it tore up the whole patio, the waste pipes and it spread all through the lawn, that was about 10 metres of spread.'
Despite not being officially classified as an invasive species in the UK, bamboo can spread faster and further than the well-known Japanese knotweed.
Stronger than steel, the plant can even reach up to 28 thousand pounds per square inch off tensile strength. It is becoming a pressing issue as it approaches its 'lag period'.