Homeowners battle invading bamboo

Keith Alletto has tried everything to get rid of the bamboo creeping under his backyard fence in Smithtown from a neighbor's property and shooting up through his lawn.

He has dug trenches, three feet deep and 135 feet long, and sunk in hard plastic barriers. He has ripped up the roots as he finds them. Nothing has worked. He even sued the neighbor in an effort to force him to get rid of the indomitable, woody plants that are part of the grass family, some of which are 40 feet tall. But he lost the case.

Now, after spending close to $35,000, he hopes Smithtown officials can help him.

The town is researching whether it should ban the invasive plant, after Supervisor Patrick Vecchio told the town board about the bamboo battles of Alletto and other residents.

No Long Island towns ban bamboo, but at least two Fire Island villages prohibit or restrict such plantings. In 2008, Saltaire banned new plantings and restricted the growth of older plantings. Ocean Beach bans bamboo along with other invasive species.

When Alletto moved into his Smithtown hamlet house on Elm Street in 2004, he found bamboo had infiltrated his cesspool liner. Later, he discovered rhizomes, the plant's horizontal sprouts, attacking his outside basement steps. In 2005, he had his yard dug up with a backhoe and installed a plastic liner specifically designed to block the bamboo rooting system. In a matter of months, it had broken through. In 2007, then out of money, Alletto said, he dug another trench himself to install a thicker barrier, but recently noticed the roots breaking through the plastic again.

Last year, Alletto took his neighbor, Robert Baldwin, to court to force him to remove the bamboo, but was unsuccessful. Baldwin inherited the bamboo when he bought the house, Alletto said. Both Baldwin and his attorney, Robert Gironda of White Plains, declined to comment.

"If it ever gets to public utilities, it will destroy water lines and gas lines," Alletto said. "Now it's creeping its way up to the front of the house."

He said he can't let his 4-year-old daughter walk on the property because shoots are razor sharp.

Anthony Corbo, a retired teacher who lives on Dale Lane in Smithtown, has also been battling bamboo encroaching from a neighbor's yard. Each evening in the spring during the growth season, Corbo said he walks his quarter-acre property and pulls out bamboo shoots. In the morning, there are more. It has even come close to his semi-inground pool, which is surrounded by stones and rocks, he said: "It grows out of the rock."

"It's apparent that the roots of these plants cause great damage to adjoining properties," Vecchio said. "Some members of the council and I believe that, no matter where the complaints are, those people need to be protected by the government."

Nurseries and landscapers discourage the planting of bamboo, said Alison Caldwell, a buyer of perennial plants for Hicks Nurseries in Westbury.

"It's a very aggressive plant," Caldwell said. The company only sells clumping bamboo, not running bamboo - the type in back of the Smithtown homes. "Running bamboo will run forever and is very invasive and destructive."

Bamboo is not on Nassau or Suffolk County's prohibited plants list, but it is on the "watch list" to be considered for banning. It was not put on the banned list for either county, said Marilyn Jordan of the Nature Conservancy, because it is not a plant that causes ecological damage, such as choking off indigenous plants. "It is not an ecological threat," she said, while noting it could cause structural damage.

* * *

Here are the common names of plants banned in both Nassau and Suffolk counties. Year in parentheses are when bans for those plants take effect.

Norway maple (2013)
Sycamore maple (2013)
Garlic mustard
Porcelain berry
Wild chervil
Japanese angelica tree
Mugwort, common wormwood
Japanese barberry
Slender false brome (2012)
Carolina fanwort
Cardamine impatiens
Marrowleaf bittercress
Oriental bittersweet
Spotted knapweed, star-thistle
Canada thistle
Japanese virgin’s bower
Black swallow-wort
Pale swallow-wort
Chinese yam; cinnamon vine (2012)
Brazilian waterweed
Autumn olive
Winged euonymus (2016)
Winter creeper (2013)
Cypress spurge
Japanese knotweed, giant knotweed
Smooth buckthorn (2013)
Tall glyceria, English watergrass, reed mannagrass (2012)
Japanese hops
Water thyme
Frogbit
Cogon grass (2012)
Red Baron (2014)
Crimson king or royal red (2016)
Yellow iris (2012)
Broadleaf pepperweed
Chinese lespedeza
Border privet
Japanese honeysuckle (2011)
Amur honeysuckle (2011)
Morrow's honeysuckle (2011)
Uruguayan primrose willow
Floating primrose willow
Moneywort (2011)
Purple loosestrife
Japanese stilt grass
Chinese silver grass; Eulalia (2016)
Parrot-feather
Broadleaf water-milfoil (2011)
Eurasian water-milfoil
Marsh dewflower (2012)
Yellow floating heart
Wavy leaf basketgrass
Mile a minute weed
Reed canary-grass
Amur cork tree (2013)
Common reed grass
Curly pondweed
Kudzu
Lesser celandine
Common buckthorn
Black locust (2013)
Rosa multiflora
Multiflora rose
Wineberry
Gray florist’s willow
Cup-plant
Water chestnut
Beach vitex