we planted some bamboo a year or two ago. my mom's the gardener, but i have a few tips:
1) unless you want the bamboo growing everywhere, you MUST create underground cement walls to prevent the outward growing of the roots.
2) since bamboo is a grass, use some grass fertilizer on it (we haven't been using fertilizer and it hasn't been too rigid in the ground, has been falling ever, etc)
3)our bamboo took a year until new shoots started growing - the ones that did grow that year, died. so give it some time.
4) we started out with clumps of bamboo, about 6-10 shoots per ball, and maybe 8 feet high. $40/clump IIRC. now, 2 years later, we have a patch about 12 or 15 feet by 8 or so. maybe 10 or 11 feet high if they didn't keep falling down. (need fertilizer, as i have said).
~tmm