WHEN we bought our house in the Tarn and signed the papers, I had a chat with the former owner who had retained his home in Banbury. We talked about our property and he mentioned the bamboo – there is a little grove of it in the garden, perhaps three metres by two.

“You have to keep an eye on it. If you are not careful, it will pop up in Claude’s garden,” he said pointing to the garden wall and fence between the two properties.

I thought no more of it and in the summer, I enjoyed the fact the bamboo waved in the breeze and obscured the red brick garage on the ground behind our plot. However, on returning from holiday in July and catching up on grass-cutting. I found my usual path to the compost heap behind the bamboo, somewhat obstructed.

I was amazed how quickly the bamboo had spread and while I was assured by our French neighbour, Claude that it had never popped up in his garden, I realised the former owner of the garden was trying to warn me that I had to keep an eye on the stuff.

I cut the bamboo back but then noticed there were many former stumps of bamboo, all closely connected. I had no idea at that stage, but in fact the bamboo had been planted some 30 years ago, and was well-established.

I mugged up on the many ways of tackling bamboo and after chatting it over with Ellie, opted to chop it down and dig it up.

Chop it down and dig it up: such a short sentence, but I did not appreciate quite what I had let myself in for. If you can imagine a nine-to 12-inch deep piece of wood and root stretching to six or seven square metres, that is what I was faced with after cutting the bamboo canes down to ground level.

I started attacking these in October, hacking into them with a mattock, as opposed to an axe, for the earth and root would only have blunted the blade.

Perhaps being 71 was a consideration but I found after a solid hour of hacking and attempting to prise out the root ball, I was exhausted. The vibration as I kept cutting down into the wood was another factor but gradually, I managed to dig out great chunks of it and wheelbarrow it to the trailer and take it down to the local dump.

The mattock blade broke in the end and I had to replace it before I finally dug out the last piece early in January.

During my research, I had read that ridding a garden of bamboo is not a battle but a war that can go on several years, so I did not celebrate too soon. It was just as well because as I sought to remove the traces of roots, I found myself going deeper and deeper.

I had expected to spend a week turning the plot over and picking out the roots, but instead I discovered the roots covered some 22 square meters and in many cases went down over a meter in depth. The roots are quite strange in that they had the appearance of being balls of wire wool, wrapped around earth.

I kept digging and digging up to 1.30m. The saga took over my life. In a rainy late winter and early spring, I was out there whenever it was dry. Every spare moment when I had some energy, I was digging pits, half-filling up dustbin bags with balls of fibrous roots and earth and transporting them down to the dump.

I even lost track of my self-imposed weekly deadlines for these blogs.

Some 163 dustbin bags later – yes I counted them – I came to an area without roots. I had finished – well almost, I then had to spread a black, plastic double-thickness liner over the entire area, a metre down, and push the earth back on top of it. The idea behind this is to deny any deep roots that may have escaped my attention, the light from which to prosper.

Having covered it all in, I then spread another liner over the top, covered it in gravel and cut in areas for various shrubs and trees.

A saga that had commenced last October was completed last Sunday. I should imagine for every hour I have spent in the garden these past six months, 58 minutes of them were spent on bamboo.

“How’s the bamboo,” asked Claude?

“Don’t ask,” I replied.

I explained to him the bamboo we saw waving in the breeze was much like an iceberg: the biggest development was taking place well below the surface.

“Another couple of years and it was ready to take over most of the garden,” I explained.

It was then that he informed me it had been planted some 30 years ago: small wonder it was so well established.

I am leaner and fitter than I have been for a few years. Whether this is necessary at the age of almost 72, is a moot point but I will now keep a look out for number 47 on the garden menu: fresh bamboo shoots. If they pop up, I am ready to obliterate them.

However, after what I have been through, nothing it can throw at me now, can be as bad. I have got my life back.