Bamboo is a rare crafting material in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s a little more difficult to get than other similar items, like maple leaves, summer shells, and snowflakes, all of which you can pick up or snag in your net while walking around your island.

How to Get Bamboo in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

The ’normal’ way of getting bamboo to grow in your settlement involves traveling to other, mystery islands.

  • Go to the Resident Services building on your island.
  • Access the Nook Stop in the lower-right of the room.
  • Select Redeem Nook Miles.
  • Pick Nook Miles Ticket. This item costs 2,000 Nook Miles, which you earn by doing various tasks on your island.
  • Choose Redeem. The machine will dispense your ticket.
  • Because the next steps depend on chance, you should get several tickets at once to save some trips back to Resident Services.
  • Now, head to your airport. Talk to Orville at the desk and say, “I wanna fly!”
  • At the next prompt, choose Use Nook Miles Ticket.
  • After some dialogue, Wilbur will fly you to another island. You’ll know right away if you’ve arrived at one with bamboo because it will be visible from the plane.
  • If you don’t see bamboo, talk to Wilbur to return to your island. Once you arrive, talk to Orville again and repeat the steps to use a Nook Miles Ticket. Keep trying until you get a bamboo island.
  • Once you get the right island, you have a few options. Use your shovel to dig up the marked spots around the bamboo plants to get bamboo shoots that you can plant when you return home.
  • How to Get a Shovel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
  • If you want the materials and not the plants, use a flimsy or stone axe to harvest bamboo pieces the same way you collect wood from trees. Each bamboo tree will yield three pieces per day.
  • In the spring, hitting bamboo trees with an axe will also get you Young Spring Bamboo, another crafting ingredient.
  • You can also collect entire trees to take home to plant; this option saves you from waiting for the shoots you plant to grow. To do so, use your shovel on a tree after you’ve eaten fruit or a bamboo shoot.
  • Talk to Wilbur again to return home with your bamboo.

Other Ways to Get Bamboo

While traveling to mystery islands is the standard way to collect bamboo, you can also get it using three other methods:

Go to the Resident Services building on your island.

Access the Nook Stop in the lower-right of the room.

Select Redeem Nook Miles.

Pick Nook Miles Ticket. This item costs 2,000 Nook Miles, which you earn by doing various tasks on your island.

Choose Redeem. The machine will dispense your ticket.

Because the next steps depend on chance, you should get several tickets at once to save some trips back to Resident Services.

Now, head to your airport. Talk to Orville at the desk and say, “I wanna fly!”

At the next prompt, choose Use Nook Miles Ticket.

After some dialogue, Wilbur will fly you to another island. You’ll know right away if you’ve arrived at one with bamboo because it will be visible from the plane.

If you don’t see bamboo, talk to Wilbur to return to your island. Once you arrive, talk to Orville again and repeat the steps to use a Nook Miles Ticket. Keep trying until you get a bamboo island.

Once you get the right island, you have a few options. Use your shovel to dig up the marked spots around the bamboo plants to get bamboo shoots that you can plant when you return home.

If you want the materials and not the plants, use a flimsy or stone axe to harvest bamboo pieces the same way you collect wood from trees. Each bamboo tree will yield three pieces per day.

In the spring, hitting bamboo trees with an axe will also get you Young Spring Bamboo, another crafting ingredient.

You can also collect entire trees to take home to plant; this option saves you from waiting for the shoots you plant to grow. To do so, use your shovel on a tree after you’ve eaten fruit or a bamboo shoot.

Talk to Wilbur again to return home with your bamboo.

  • If you buy 100 turnips from Daisy Mae when she visits your island on Sunday mornings, you may receive some bamboo shoots from her in the mail the next day.
  • Your neighbors reward you for doing favors for them by giving you clothes, crafting materials, and furniture. Sometimes, they will give you bamboo pieces or shoots.
  • Once one of your friends who is also playing New Horizons gets bamboo, they can either bring it to you during an island visit or mail it to you at the airport.

What to Do With Bamboo

You can plant bamboo trees on your island like any other plant, and they can provide a unique look or help you set aside an area for a relaxing garden area. And once you do, each mature plant will produce one more shoot that you can dig up from a marked spot next to the tree.

The shoots, pieces, and young spring bamboo you obtain from bamboo trees are also necessary as ingredients to craft furniture and decorations that you can’t buy at Nook’s Cranny (although you may obtain them from other villagers or by shaking trees). You’ll receive recipes for these items in the spring and can get more from message bottles, balloons, and your neighbors.

Bamboo Items and How to Create Them

Here are the items and the ingredients you need to create them.

Even if you have the ingredients, you can’t craft these items unless you’ve learned the recipe from a card.

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