If you ever get a chance to visit Edison's laboratory in the Ft Myers area you would see that Thomas Edison used bamboo for many things. Two come to mind as I write this. 1) the filaments within his original light bulbs were wound on sections of bamboo with great success. 2) He had one of the first in ground swimming pools in Florida and the concrete used to make the pool was reinforced with bamboo. To this day, (so the story goes) the pool has zero cracks in it.

Id say bamboo is pretty versatile and that your son may be onto something.

Encourage your son to succeed with his ideas.

If you can, please visit Tropical Bamboo Nursery in Loxahatchee. They have an amazing pavilion using bamboo, plus furniture, plus acres of young and mature, tropical clumping Bamboos.

It is a beautiful place that is very calming, yet inspiring. The owner, Robert, can answer any Bamboo questions. He can tell you which varieties are best for building uses.

Bamboo is a very useful, renewable resourse, as well as a lovely addition to gardens.

Tropical Bamboo is one of my favorite places to visit.

Bring lunch! You can feast on a Bamboo table, on Bamboo seats, under the incredible Bamboo "Wing."

Lisa

And we can help by buying bamboo products! It takes no pesticides to grow it. It grows a foot a day in some cases. Besides the products mentioned it provides food and fibers for fabrics.

And there is another wonderful plant fiber that is making much money for the farmers in other countries. It provides extremely healthy food oils, machinery oils that do not pollute the environment, fabulously comfortable fibers for textiles, paper that does not kill forests and it is so vigorous that it smothers out all weeds, therefore, the growth of this crop does not use any pesticides or herbicides.

Hemp is fabulous, too.

we have a set of sheets made of bamboo... darn comfortable, and very durable so far.

Your son and I have a lot in common! I adore bamboo and grow many tropical varieties.

There are some great websites and books out there about building things with bamboo.

A great bamboo nursery is Sarasota Bamboo.

Yeah, goldenpond...what THEY all said! Bamboo is GREAT! It is a very GREEN product, so quickly renewed and so durable and beautiful. It is THE "wood" of the new century! We are hoping to install bamboo flooring in our living room and dining room before too much longer. I think it is perfect for our Florida Beach Cottage look, and so renewable. I can't wait!

Bamboo has been used in construction of various sorts for centuries. Can't say enough good about it. And growing the clumping kind is fantastic!

Marcia

We have bamboo flooring on the entire downstairs level of our house, with the exception of the kitchen & bathroom. It looks beautiful. When we were building our house, we heard a lot of negative feedback from the flooring companies - they said that bamboo scratched easily. But thus far, it's taken everything my husband & dog & I have given out to it, without a sign of a scratch. The drywall has fared less well :)

Cheers!
Heather W