[Scpg] Bamboo Expert to speak in SB August 20 Santa Barbara, Wednesday, 6 PM

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Bamboo expert to speak in Santa Barbara

August 20 Santa Barbara, Wednesday, 6 PM, Seaside Gardens

Gale Goldberg and Pat Brodie will present also. Gale Goldberg
montecito at earthlink.net


Durnford Dart, who established his pioneering crop in 1989, is an
acknowledged world expert on the marketing and cultivation of
bamboo, he is one of the very few independent, non- funded growers to
establish a bamboo farm outside Asia. His book, The
Bamboo Handbook, was published in 1999 and is an informative and
fascinating introduction to the world's largest grass. Of the
1,500 bamboo species worldwide, Durnford's Belli Bamboo Parkland boasts
a plantation of over 65 acres containing 250 individual
running and clumping species.

"Bamboo species are found from the snowline to the equator and its uses
are only limited by one's imagination," he says. "Bamboo
is ideal for landscaping, it provides nutritious food, building
materials, scaffolding, stage sets, household and garden utensils …"

Durnford's main market crop is edible bamboo shoots and poles where he
has generated a rapidly growing market. In addition, he
imports and distributes many styles of bamboo flooring, a durable, eco-
friendly alternative to wood.

"Chop a tree down and you have to wait 20 - 40 years for another one to
grow", he points out. "Bamboo can be harvested annually,
will keep regenerating for hundreds of years and over fifteen years will
yield five times the amount of timber that you'd get from Pine.
The flooring is durable, attractive and it's an environmental godsend. "


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