Blog by Sally Malkin.
Back at Easter in 2022, I received an email from an arts programme I’d previously worked with. They were asking if I’d be interested in project managing a new project based on bamboo. At the time, I was recovering from the challenges of COVID and dealing with personal loss and grateful for the opportunity and assuming it would be a short, two-month commitment at most, I jumped at the chance. How wrong I was!
That single email ended up changing my life in ways I never expected. Today, I find myself writing a blog for an organisation called Brilliant Bamboo—which was born directly from that project. What started as a short-term role turned into a year-long journey, and eventually into a full-blown passion. I’m now a devoted enthusiast of all things bamboo.
Let’s be honest—bamboo often gets a bad name. People say it’s invasive, non-native to the UK, hard to control, and a menace in gardens. And yes, when planted without knowledge or care, it can spread aggressively. But this blog isn’t about the negatives. It’s about seeing bamboo for what it can be—a versatile, beautiful, and sustainable material being used all over the world, including right here in the UK.
In February 2024, I travelled to Sri Lanka—not on a bamboo hunters expedition, just a regular holiday. But everywhere I turned, bamboo caught my eye. Towering species stretched skywards beyond sight. I saw green, black, and yellow varieties (don’t ask me to name them!) growing along roadsides and being used for everyday objects. It was a beautiful sight. Similar to a trip to Marrakesh and seeing bamboo growing there gave me the same buzz and love for bamboo.
Looking back, I realised I had unknowingly encountered bamboo before—during a visit to Trebah Gardens in Cornwall in summer 2021, before my journey with bamboo had even begun and I wish I had paid more attention to the growing of it then. Once you fall in love with bamboo, you start noticing it everywhere. I now plan trips around it—like a recent visit to the bamboo labyrinth at Alnwick Gardens in Northumberland, thanks to a lovely snippet by Monty Don. Bamboo can be and is being grown in the UK.
While we may never see the massive bamboo species from Sri Lanka or Morocco growing here in the UK, we can adopt bamboo more widely—for its environmental benefits and its potential as a sustainable building material.
Over the last few months, Brilliant Bamboo has been running some great masterclasses for local makers, artists, and designers. They’re on pause for now, but one fantastic thing that’s come out of them is a small group of future bamboo advocates (the Stoke Bamboo Army!) —individuals passionate about sharing the incredible uses and properties of bamboo with others and helping to change people’s opinion that it is a misunderstood plant.
