More clumping bamboo, but is this best choice?

For my monthly discussion party, I asked that guests discuss trees suitable for my back yard.

During a short tour of my back yard as it is (or was) I proudly pointed out my clumping bamboo.  One guest said this was a very bad choice, bamboo is invasive, and I will cause damage to natural ecosystems by growing it.

I replied that I had chosen a clumping bamboo, which is not invasive, it grows outward very slowly, and in fact barely survives the heat, cold, drought, etc.  You can see how slowly it grows, I said.

The guest was not impressed, adding that birds would spread the seeds and wreck natural ecosystems as well as neighboring yards.

I dropped the topic there, though I think I should have pointed out what one of my friends had said earlier that afternoon, that bamboo produces seeds very infrequently, maybe 20-100 years (an online source says "less than once in a lifetime") and only when the bamboo plants of a particular variety are dying out all over the world at the same time.  Then the only thing left is the seeds, and they don't grow very easily either.  It is apparently an ancient strategy to dump parasites.  I have confirmed this story online since then.  It seemed to me not worthwhile to argue with someone so obviously misinformed and opinionated.  In retrospect, I should have been the better host, and repeated what my friend had said.

But lo, there are even some who say that running bamboo really is not that bad (it would have taken over the whole world millions of years ago if it was as invasive as some very vocal anti-bamboosers claim nowadays).  It can and should be controlled with simple techniques (it is the lazy folks who don't follow directions that are to blame).   Further, clumping bamboo, though it grows very slowly in just one expanding clump, tends to grow inexorably though whatever is in its path, so don't plant near foundations or driveways.  And they say for various reasons clumping bamboo does not make a good privacy hedge, the tops tend to droop to the sides rather than remaining tight.  Clumping bamboos are also more sensitive in various ways (cold, heat, drought) and then there is that slow growing thing.

I fear those "simple techniques" may indeed be too troublesome for most people, including me, however.  The best thing might be to have your running bamboo grove set up by a professional who knows how to do just that, I feel now.

But now, somewhat, I fear the clump.  What happens when my clumping bamboo hits my concrete fence?  Eventually, probably measured in a decade or two, I will have to remove my first bamboo on along the north fence, though that neighbor literally does nothing in or with his back yard and wouldn't even notice if Bambi One started growing on the other side of the fence.  I would make a nice counterpoint to his volunteer garden of hackberry trees that got started in the unusually wet early summer this year and a 10 foot high sunflower.  So I think I leave Bambi One alone, she can just clump there to her hearts content.

On Thursday I just got a second bamboo plant, which I have named Spindly Bambi.  Initially it was over 8 feet tall, but the nursury gave me a scissors to cut at 7 feet so I could squeeze it into my car.  I watered it well on Thursday night, expecting all my trees and plants to be planted today (Friday).  That did not happen as the sprinkler guy knew quite well that it would do no good to plant plants until the system can actually be operated, and that won't occur until after City inspection and after final setup next Thursday.

Spindly Bambi did not like the area near the SW corner of the house.  Even Thursday night in gentle breeze she blew over.  That area somehow channels wind between my house and the southern neighbor from the E, SE, and S into a jet stream.  Then today in 15 mph winds it was hopeless, even with Spindly Bambi propped right up against the doorway of Lyndhurst.

So I've relocated Spindly Bambi near the Palm (Palmy) and the CPS electric utility transformer (Hummy).  That spot is spared the worst winds I think.  But there are lots of wires in the ground there, and it might not do to have an inexorably growing bamboo clump pushing through them.

So now I don't know what to do.  I had been thinking about getting a third bamboo plant for the location I had originally intended for Spindly Bambi.  But that area has lots of wires too.