Fargesia Green Dragon

The Fargesia Green Dragon is a new non-invasive variety of bamboo that is about to make its way into all gardens. With moderate growth, particularly leafy, it displays a very bushy, straight, compact and dense habit, and develops green culms that can turn more or less red or even almost black. In the garden, it grows vigorously in partial shade as well as in shade, withstands wind quite well, and adapts to dry soils in summer. Plant it in a pot on the terrace, as a standalone plant, or create a beautiful small windbreak hedge with this new generation bamboo. Like all Fargesia, it grows rapidly in height but spreads slowly over the years without ever becoming invasive.

The Fargesia ssp.Sichuan, also marketed under the name Green Dragon, was discovered a few years ago in the Chinese province of the same name. It is sometimes considered a subspecies of Fargesia nitida. It is a plant of the Poaceae family, a type of woody-stemmed grass that develops from a non-invasive rhizomatous rootstock, also known as clump-forming. In this type of bamboo, the rhizomes with very short internodes develop slowly at the periphery of the rootstock, which gradually expands, but they also develop towards the centre of the clump, which remains very dense without thinning out. The Fargesia ssp. Sichuan is hardy, it can withstand temperatures down to -15°C (5 °F).

'Green Dragon' forms an exceptionally dense clump from bottom to top, reaching about 2 to 3 m (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in) in height at maturity. Its growth is quite fast, around 20 to 30 cm (7.9 to 11.8 in) per year, depending on the growing conditions. Eventually, the plant will spread about 1.50 m (4 ft 11 in) to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) on the ground. The culms are upright, straight, slender, 1 cm (0.4 in) in diameter, but sturdy, with a plum colour and covered with bloom when young. Over the months, they take on a green to more or less pronounced red colour, or even almost black depending on their exposure to the sun.  In the first year, the culms bear few leaves. The foliage present on the culms is particularly abundant, evergreen, and mainly located towards the top of the plant.  The leaves of the Fargesia 'Sichuan' bamboo are small, narrow, lanceolate, and tapering at their tips. Their colour is dark green, with a matte finish, forming an astonishing combination with the dark colour of the culms.

The particularly dense, slender and colourful Fargesia Green Dragon is perfect as a standalone shrub or in a large pot or container on the balcony or terrace. It can also be used, alone or combined with other Fargesia,  to create a small hedge or a green screen. It integrates well into a shrub border with plants such as Japanese maples, hydrangeas, Mahonia. You can plant at its base a Brunnera macrophylla Jack Frost and surround it with lush perennials: tall grasses, hostas, giant cannas, as well as tall dahlias (Dahlia imperialis) or climbing aster Aster carolinianus will also be good companions for this magnificent bamboo. To add surprising foliage to it in summer, you can pair it with a viticella-type clematis with red flowers (Madame Julia Correvon, purpurea Plena Elegans, Avant Garde) whose stems will wrap around the black culms, their small foliage blending in a very natural way with the vegetation of the Sichuan bamboo.