Alternatives to bamboo?

Bamboo will definitely do that. If it isn't doing it for you I suspect there isn't enough soil (maybe the soil is only 1' wide too?) or "goodness" and if that's the case I don't think anything else will want to grow there either :( (You might have an inappropriate variety of Bamboo too perhaps?). Bamboo is not particularly cheap as a screen - plants are £30 each ... cheaper than that and they are likely to be in juvenile phase still and take several years to mature to the point where they grow tall; but they do come up on eBay - people with clumps/containers that have got out of hand; I've bought half-oak barrels of Bamboo for £50 and split them into 4.

Have you got a photo of the area where you want the screen?

I think its a bit longer than "brief" ?

I chop my tall grasses down around February - they are getting battle weary with the Wind etc. by then - and its July before they are waste-chest high I think. Now, mid August, they are 10' tall. My strongest growing one is Miscanthus sacchariflorus (or maybe that should be sacchariflora)

 

Instead of grasses, does any one know if there are any tall plants which blossom?

 

Sal, that Himalayan birch looks like the ones in the pub's beer garden that I mentioned. I mistook them for silver birch.

Kristen, my one bamboo plant is in open ground, not where I want the screening. The soil there is heavy clay but not so bad. It just looks like its in a permanent state of being half dead.

 

I have a section by a wall, only 8" wide and with bad soil 1 foot down but I've put good soil on top of that. I've planted semiarundia fastuosa (spelling?) and after two years they're reaching for heaven.

If I get a chance, I'll take a pic for you. It was recommended by Stambamboo.

P.S. If you have a plant doing poorly, walk over to it, give it a good kick and tell it that if it doesn't improve itself, you're digging it up and throwing it on the compost heap! You'll see an almighty improvement in that plant in the next month or so. It works everytime, believe it or believe it not!

 

Semiarundinaria fastuosa it just one of the most pretty bamboo ever .

Clueless , If your bamboo dasn`t look good , can simple be that is in a sunny spot , not all the bamboos like sunny but all the bamboo love wet soil .

Plus you shouldn`t give up with bamboo , but simply get a better and faster growing bamboo , anychance to show us a picture?

 

Well, they can sit and sulk for a couple of years after planting, but sounds like yours is making even less effort than that.

I believe that you are supposed to water copiously in Spring, and feed in Summer (after the new culms have come up) - which, to me, seems backways-about ... but that is what I do with mine. The ones I planted this Spring I added a handful of chicken pellets below, and another above, and they seem to have made a good start.