Hackensack, NJ Invasive Plant Rules: Bamboo Restrictions (2026)

The running bamboo ban was added to Chapter 162, Trees, by Ordinance No. 41-2022, adopted September 6, 2022, as an amendment to Section 162-3, the same section that has barred planting poplar, catalpa and willow trees near public streets since the 1980s. Unlike that older street-tree restriction, the bamboo prohibition is not limited to public rights-of-way: it reaches any sale, planting or knowing propagation of phyllostachys aureosulcata, the invasive running-bamboo genus, anywhere in the city, private yards included. The ordinance took effect October 1, 2022, and it specifically closes the replacement loophole, reaching "the replanting or replacing of existing vegetation after it has died or has been removed," so a homeowner cannot restock a bamboo stand that dies back or gets removed.

The same 2022 amendment added identical sale, planting and propagation bans for two other invasive species, tree of heaven and Bradford pear, in the same sentence of Section 162-3. Because the running bamboo ban sits in Article I of Chapter 162, which carries no penalty section of its own, a violation is enforced under the Code's general penalty clause at Section 1-15 rather than the $100 minimum fine that applies specifically to the tree-removal-and-replacement article added in 2024.