Cane: Meadowbrook Terrace Streambank Restoration

We got a letter from the City of Hendersonville in 2016 saying that they were planning streambank restoration and part of the project was going to be by our log cabin.

The purpose of the multi-area streambank restoration project is to preserve property owners’ land and protect the city’s sewer infrastructure while improving the overall quality of Mud Creek. Fifteen eroded banks will be restored throughout the city along waterways that feed into Mud Creek.

Meadowbrook Terrace Streambank Restoration >

We were really looking forward to the project. It was going to take care of a lot of problems.

Bamboo

The picture above is from when I first bought the cabin. There was already bamboo growing by the brook.

That may seem ridiculous, but this bamboo is not an invasive species. It is giant cane, Arundinaria gigantea. It is a species of bamboo that is native to North Carolina and a lot of other places. If you see a road or an area called Caney Branch or Caney anything else, this is what they are talking about.

Did you notice the “giant” part of the name? This stuff gets big. Up to 3″ wide and more than 30 feet high. It is all one big plant. The roots spread out a long way and every spring more bamboo comes up from them. If you step on them or mow them down, you can kinda keep it contained, but it is a lot of work.

Each bamboo stalk lives about 10 years. Then it dies standing up inside of the rest of the bamboo. If you don’t pull the dead ones out, the whole bamboo area looks dead and miserable.

This photo is from last spring. The bamboo has gotten closer to the house.

The bamboo from the front porch of the log cabin

It created a nice barrier. And it was always full of birds.

Bamboo grows tall. Taller than you can believe.

This is a guy I hired to help me cut back the bamboo. You can see how crazy tall this stuff is.

He thought he could get it cut back in no time at all. I warned him that it would take longer than he thought, but he still gave me a low estimate. I told him to just take the time it takes and I would pay him for all the hours he worked on it.

He called his friend and they spent the day cutting down more and more cane.

About an hour in he called a friend to come work with him. I asked him to pull out the dead stuff as much as they could, so one guy did that. The other guy kept cutting bamboo and stacking it up.

There was cut cane everywhere. And it still didn't seem to make a dent. — There was cut cane everywhere. And it still didn’t seem to make a dent.

By the end of the day there was cane everywhere. They had piles cut to length by the road like a barricade around the house. And there were piles and non-piles and half-cut bamboo leaning everywhere.

He never came back. He never answered is phone. We never saw them again.