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About the Bamboo Ranch

Bamboo Ranch is an urban specialty farm in Tucson, Arizona. We offer a large selection of desert grown bamboo plants for every use, from privacy hedges or container plants for a cozy patio retreat on a small scale, to medium sized groves for poolside or urban spaces, to towering giants for shade and screen. A variety of shade cured poles are also available. Located on Tucson's west side, Bamboo Ranch features a large demonstration garden with several mature groves of both running and clumping types. Owners Matt and Holly Finstrom have over 30 years of experience growing bamboo in the southwest desert.

Chinese Goddess Bamboo

Owner Holly Finstrom pictured above with a Chinese Goddess Bamboo.

Business Protocols

 

Bamboo Ranch is open by appointment. Please contact us via phone or email to make an appointment for a visit. We provide expert advice particular to your planting site. We provide a tour of the gardens and nursery with views of desert grown species like Greenstripe Blowpipe, Giant Weaver's, Striped Golden, Striking, Giant Timber, Balcooa, and many others.

 

 Delivery is available. Each plant includes comprehensive written planting and care instructions and specific recommendations for growing your bamboo in the desert.

Why grow bamboo?
Elegant Bamboo

Imagine your own mini jungle

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In the desert southwest few things are as precious as shade. Having a cool retreat from the summer heat, hearing the rustle of leaves in the wind, enjoying the scent of lush foliage after the rain, screening your oasis from the high rise apartments across the street, are all reason enough to grow bamboo. 

Golden Bamboo

More than a plant

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Side benefits to growing bamboo are numerous. Bamboo helps filter out noise, dust and allergens, breaks the wind, stops erosion even on a steep bank, builds up the soil, provides edible shoots, and sequesters carbon in the form of useful poles. It is used as a construction material all over the world, and one type was approved in 2004 by the ICC Evaluation Service

as a structural building material in the international building code system.

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Giant Weaver's Bamboo

Bamboo poles: Renewable source of building material​

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If you want to use your bamboo for construction, you can harvest the poles to do so after a few years of growth. Running type bamboos are at maximum strength from 3-10 years of age for a given cane. Clumping bamboos take longer; they are at their best from 4-12 years of age. Each individual cane can live 15-20 years and the grove lasts indefinitely, adding more canes each year. For more information on harvesting, or to purchase harvested canes, please call us at (520)-743-9879.

Why grow bamboo?
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