Prince William County, VA Invasive Plant Rules: Bamboo Restrictions (2026)

Section 29-16 of the County Code defines running bamboo as any bamboo characterized by aggressive spreading behavior, expressly including species in the genus Phyllostachys, and folds it into the article's broader definition of 'weeds' alongside grass, bushes, vines, poison ivy and poison oak. That classification matters because it puts running bamboo under the same enforcement machinery as overgrown grass. Section 29-17(c) requires every property owner to keep running bamboo under proper upkeep and appropriate containment measures, naming barriers or trenching as examples of what containment looks like; growing it without any containment is itself the violation, independent of whether it has spread anywhere yet.

Section 29-17(d) adds a second, separate violation: letting running bamboo spread from the owner's property onto a public right-of-way or onto adjoining property the owner does not own. Because these are listed as separate offenses within the same section, a property owner can be cited under (c) for unmaintained bamboo that has not yet crossed a property line, and separately under (d) once it does escape onto a neighbor's yard or the road right-of-way. The county added running bamboo to the weeds article by Ordinance No.

20-19, effective July 1, 2020, folding an established Northern Virginia nuisance-plant problem into the existing weeds-and-grass enforcement structure rather than creating a freestanding invasive-species chapter.