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Learn how to build a bamboo fence using bamboo grown in your garden.

Nothing embodies beauty, simplicity and strength like a bamboo fence. In Japan bamboo fencebuilding is an art form. Yet you don't have to be an artist, or even particularly handy, to learn how to build a bamboo fence and construct this basic picket design derived from Japanese tea garden fences. It is a pleasure both to build and to behold.

What Bamboo Poles?

If you're new to bamboo growing, you'll need to purchase poles from a retailer to make your fence. Either that, or wait a few years until your plantings are ready to harvest. A new planting of bamboo may produce canes of useful size in three to four years, but these canes need to mature for another three years before being harvested for poles. A final option is to harvest poles (with permission, of course) from an established grove in your area.

What Bamboo Fence Design?

You can build a simple picket fence entirely of bamboo, or you can combine it with standard lumber. You can wire bamboo pickets to a chain link fence or to bamboo stringers attached to peeler pole posts, as described here.

Bamboo pickets can be arranged on the fence in many ways. The tops, neatly cut just above the node, can be arranged in a straight line or in a random, ragged pattern. The pickets can be hung on one or both sides of a bamboo stringer. Pickets can also be arranged in a repeating pattern, such as two together, then a space, then one, then a space, then two, and so on. Or they can be alternated with cedar boards.

Choosing and Attaching the Bamboo Pickets

Take a bamboo pole and look at it closely. Now turn it 90 degrees. If it was straight before, it likely is zigzag now. This has to do with the way bamboo branches grow