• Arrange a bamboo plant and some rocks into a serene still life.Ben Bloom/Photodisc/Getty Images
  
  Bamboo and rock seem to have a natural affinity. The two mix well in designs for outdoor entryways, patios and garden nooks that have just enough room for a tiny rock garden or a fountain. Some popular rocks to pair with bamboo are granite boulders, shaped and water-worn lava rocks, polished river stones, and monochromatic pebbles.
  
  

Barrier Border for Running Bamboo

• Running bamboo is graceful, vigorous, and quickly grows into dense fencing or privacy screens. It is also tremendously aggressive and will take over the yard while you're not paying attention. The solution, if you don't have it constrained in a planter, is to install a rhizome barrier -- a polyurethane underground panel that is sunk two or more feet around the bamboo bed. To finish the look of planted running bamboo, rake the dirt directly under the bamboo plants, all the way to the buried barrier. Arrange a wide border of pebbles all around the perimeter of the planted area. Keeping the pebbles out from under the bamboo makes it easier to clean up fallen leaves and to jab a sharp spade into the ground just inside the rhizome barrier from time to time to break any aggressive roots. Pebbles of all one color -- white, black or gray -- turn this bit of landscaping into a piece of modern art.
  
  

River Rock Garden

• If you don't have the room, the time or the temperament to plant a traditional garden, plant a low-maintenance rock garden. Create a Zen oasis in the back yard with a large rectangular frame, sunk most of the way into the ground and filled in with egg-sized, polished river stones. Set small islands of bamboo in teak planters in this garden. Or plant a border of large, slow-growing clumping bamboo around the edge. Build up a multilevel rock garden with lava rocks or small local boulders harvested from your own property. Plant a few solitary clumping bamboo plants among the hilly rocks. Or use running bamboo, safely contained in planters that are hidden by the rocks.
  
  

Bamboo and Boulders

• Bamboo integrates smoothly into an Asian water feature on a patio or in a garden. One clever way to disguise the pipes of a fountain is to make them of hollowed-out bamboo. When the water spills out of the bamboo into a worn-away or hollowed out boulder, you have a spare work of art. A water feature this simple could be set against a screen of bamboo. A perfectly matched group of bamboo plants in containers, to prevent unruly spreading, makes a great backdrop to a bamboo fountain. Or keep all the bamboo live and plant it partway around a garden boulder for a semi-private seat. A curve of bamboo at the perimeter of a pond with a boulder waterfall is also aesthetically pleasing and the sound of rustling bamboo keeps the pond musical even when its waterfall is turned off.