EXCLUSIVE Beware bamboo, it can take over your life...
or at the very least your garden: Woman was forced to pay £1,250 to a 'man with a digger' to clear the plant - as she blames 90s garden makeover shows for 'Japanese knotweed 2.0' crisis By Debora Robertson Published: 03:55 EDT, 17 June 2024 | Updated: 04:16 EDT, 17 June 2024 e-mail 1 View comments Years ago, I visited a French village on holiday. On my daily walks, I loved to peer through the railings of a charming Art Nouveau house which appeared to be abandoned.
Through the thicket of three-metre-high bamboo that filled the front garden, I could just about see the crumbling stone steps that led up to heavy wooden doors and the house's pretty, green balconies and shutters. I christened it the Sleeping Beauty house. Little did I know that ten years later, I'd pick up the keys to that Sleeping Beauty and the bamboo forest so would cease to be so enchanting.
In that first week, I patted myself on the back for being an extremely competent adult, having navigated my way through the notoriously complicated French bureaucracy involved in buying a house and establishing residency, then moving all of our possessions, our dogs and cat 1,000km from London to the South of France . Of course, there were renovations to do but also surely there would be plenty of time for rosé and wandering about the market with a straw basket over my arm, like the cosplaying French housewife I aspired to be? Debora Robertson had to hack a path thro.