You need a lot of space for a bamboo grove. This one is in Martin Crawford's two acre forest garden at Dartington Hall, Devon. Bamboos play an important part in his design both for edible shoots and for cane production. Some stems are the size of scaffold poles; indeed bamboo has long been used for that purpose in Asia. 

 In a domestic garden they are a somewhat trickier proposition. Broadly speaking bamboos are either 'clumpers' or 'runners'. My father has planted both kinds over the years and it is a fairly large garden so they don't look out of place. The clumpers have slowly increased and provide a good source of tall canes to use as bean poles on the allotment. Then again he also planted one of the Sasa species which is most definitely a runner to the extent that it would advance on the whole garden if left unattended.

 I cut the entire swathe of it right down to the ground today which will provide enough short sticks to last a decade or two...