Elsmore might seem an unlikely place to find an enormous bamboo garden, yet that’s exactly what’s hiding in Terry Allison’s backyard.
Allison has called Elsmore home for around 20 years, and is now “semi-retired” due to heart problems that have forced him to slow down a bit.
His yard boasts several varieties of bamboo, including scented, black, solid stock and hollow stock, each with their own unique properties and growing patterns.
Allison ordered the starts for the plants from a nursery in California, not terribly far from where he worked for multiple years as a landscaper and gardener. He left the west coast in the early 90s.
“Horticulture’s what I did for 20 years,” he said.
REGARDING the bamboo in his yard, “it might be a mistake that I done it,” he said, laughing, as bamboo (whether in Kansas or elsewhere) grows exceptionally quickly and can take over an ecosystem if left unchecked.
“It’s already out of control. This will all be Elsmore one day,” he grinned, while making a wide-sweeping gesture.
Allison’s bamboo project has been growing for close to eight years, and even in that short time much of it’s already taken hold and adapted to the Kansas climate.
Bamboo is hard to destroy, Allison said. “It’s harder than hard. You wouldn’t want to get hit in the head with it.”
IN MORE WAYS than one, Allison’s bamboo project has its roots in Japan, the place where his father was stationed in the military while Terry was on the cusp of his teenage years.
Terry’s father, Charles Franklin Allison, is proprietor of the Country Store at the Elsmore turnoff. Terry said that he’d come back to southeast Kansas to be closer to his father and other family members.
“They had a lot of bamboo out there [in Japan] that we used to play in as kids,” Terry noted.
He recalled spending around three years in Yokohama, and about a year in Yokosuka.
“If I hadn’t lived in Japan, I’d probably never experienced bamboo.”
Now Terry is passing on the tradition, where his own granddaughter, Kadience, enjoys playing in the plots that Terry has cultivated.
