Bamboo Nightmare in Studio City

Regarding “Bamboo May Be Trendy, but It’s Not Beloved by All” (Nov. 9): We owned a home in Studio City that was next to the former home of an actor who became infatuated with the “tropical look” when filming the original “Mutiny on the Bounty,” or so the story went.

Subsequent owners did nothing to discourage his bamboo plantings which, of course, invaded neighboring yards. We would come home on summer evenings to find shoots as tall as a foot that had grown up through my backyard grass since the night before. I would attack them, breaking them off down to the runner and would apply Roundup with a turkey baster to avoid hurting the grass. Finally we dug a 4-foot-deep trench all along the property line and filled it with steel reinforced concrete, to a height of 12 inches over the grade. This barrier also served as a foundation for a new fence. Then we dug up the entire backyard and manually pulled out every shred of bamboo we could find and had it carted to a dump, where I am sure there is today a beautiful stand of cane. That solved our problem.

I hope never to have anything to do with bamboo--except when it has been transformed into a fly rod.

RAY BERGEN

San Pedro