Gardening 2021

^^^yes to all this... otherwise i'd suggest investing in a very sturdy mattock, but even then it can be backbreaking work just to clear small patches of it once it's established!

have recently put a couple of feijoas in the ground which will hopefully fruit some day & propagated some gooseberries for later planting out.

bamboo is a good screening plant and very attractive - difficulty of removal less of a consideration if that's your use case. if you are going to grow running varieties, you need to make sure it's controlled properly (with a root barrier.) if you're going to grow clumping varieties, that's less of an issue. it can also be grown very successfully in containers.

Except from what I can tell from Ste's post, they're in the UK, where it isn't native, and root barriers are no guarantee against spread. "Use case" doesn't matter if one person's "use case" means allowing bamboo to take over their neighbors' gardens, too. Also, "use case" isn't a good way to think about gardening from an holistic, ecological perspective. Sorry!