Block landing · bamboo cad block
Free bamboo and ornamental grass CAD blocks for AutoCAD
By Sumana Kumar · Published 28 Nov 2023 · Updated 2 Feb 2026
Bamboo and ornamental grasses bring height, movement and screening to a planting scheme in a way that broadleaf shrubs cannot — tall vertical clumps and feathery plumes that read instantly as 'grass' on a drawing. They are favourites for modern, naturalistic and screening planting, and their blocks have a distinctive linear, fountaining character. This page collects free bamboo and grass plant CAD blocks in DWG and DXF, drawn in plan and elevation at true millimetre size for AutoCAD 2004 or later. They are free for personal and commercial work, with no signup, no watermark and no attribution.
Use them to screen a boundary, soften a modern courtyard, mass a naturalistic drift, line a water feature or add vertical movement to a contemporary scheme. Because the blocks are scaled to a clump's mature spread, you can space a screen so it closes, or a meadow drift so it flows — and the elevation makes the height that defines these plants explicit.
Why bamboo and grasses get their own block
Bamboo and ornamental grasses are linear, clumping plants — vertical stems or fountaining blades rather than rounded canopies — so a generic shrub block never quite represents them. Their blocks read with that characteristic radiating, feathery or upright-linear form, which is how a designer recognises 'grass' or 'bamboo' at a glance on a plan.
They also serve a distinct design purpose. Bamboo is often a screening plant, run as a continuous tall band; ornamental grasses are often massed into naturalistic drifts or used as repeating accents in contemporary planting. The block's form supports both, and its scale-true footprint lets you set the spacing those uses need.
Plan and elevation — height is the point
In plan, bamboo and grasses are massed into screens, bands and drifts: clumps seen from above, arrayed along a boundary or scattered through a bed. The plan block is what you path-array down a screen line or grid into a contemporary block of planting.
Elevation is especially important for these plants because their height and vertical movement are the design payoff. An elevation block of a bamboo screen or a tall grass shows how it rises against a wall, a fence or a building — vital where bamboo is doing a screening job and you need to prove it reaches the height required. Many downloads ship both views, on clean layers so the linear detail can be simplified for small-scale plans.
Spread and height across the group
This is a broad group, so treat sizes as design ranges. Low ornamental grasses (festuca, low carex) spread roughly 200–400 mm and stand 200–500 mm high; medium grasses (miscanthus cultivars, calamagrostis) spread about 0.5–1 m and reach 1–2 m; large grasses and pampas-type clumps spread 1–1.5 m and rise 2 m or more. Clumping bamboo spreads roughly 1–2 m per clump and commonly reaches 2–5 m tall, with running bamboo controlled by a root barrier — worth noting on the drawing.
These are ranges to draw against, not fixed sizes. For a screen, space clumps so their mature spread just closes the gaps; for a drift, space to the spread for solid cover or wider for an airier, more transparent planting. The elevation block lets you check the screen actually reaches the height the brief asks for.
Inserting, screening and massing
The blocks are full size in millimetres. Insert at scale 1 in a millimetre drawing, or set INSUNITS to millimetres so AutoCAD rescales on insertion. Run INSERT, snap to the centre of the clump, and place the first plant. For a bamboo screen, a path array along the boundary line spaces clumps evenly so the screen closes; for a grass drift, a triangular-offset rectangular array gives natural massed cover.
Vary scale and rotation a little between clumps so a screen or drift doesn't read as cloned — grasses especially look best with some irregularity. Where running bamboo is used, draw the root barrier line on the plan so the containment is documented. Hatch a meadow or gravel zone beneath the clumps if the planting sits in a naturalistic or contemporary ground treatment.
Where bamboo and grass blocks are used
Bamboo and grass blocks suit modern and naturalistic planting schemes, boundary and privacy screening, contemporary courtyards and roof terraces, water-feature and rain-garden edges, prairie- and meadow-style mass planting, and the soft screening of car parks and service areas. Landscape architects use them for screening and naturalistic schemes; architects use bamboo to green and screen courtyards and boundaries; students use them for contemporary and ecological studio projects.
Pair them with the trees-and-plants category for the trees and shrubs that structure a scheme, and with the accessories category where bamboo or grasses are grown in tall planters for screening on terraces and roofs.
Layers, screening checks and reuse
Keep bamboo and grasses on the planting layer, ideally distinguishable from broadleaf planting, so you can isolate the screening and check that a bamboo run actually forms a continuous barrier with no gaps. Because screening is often a functional requirement — privacy, noise, hiding a service yard — being able to verify it on both plan and elevation is genuinely useful.
Each clump is a block reference, so COUNT and QSELECT tally clumps for a plant schedule, and attributed blocks extract the schedule from the drawing. When a screen or a contemporary grass drift works, WBLOCK it as a reusable group — bamboo screens in particular tend to repeat along boundaries, so a saved run drops in fast on the next scheme and keeps the spacing consistent.
Free download
Browse the full library — DWG & DXF, no signup.
Questions
Frequently asked
Why does bamboo or grass need a different block from a shrub?+
Bamboo and grasses are linear, clumping plants — vertical stems or fountaining blades rather than rounded canopies — so their blocks read with a distinctive radiating, feathery or upright form that a generic shrub symbol can't represent.
How do I space bamboo for a continuous screen?+
Space clumps so their mature spread — roughly 1–2 m for clumping bamboo — just closes the gaps along the boundary, then use the elevation block to confirm the screen reaches the height the brief requires. A path array keeps the spacing even.
Do bamboo and grass blocks include an elevation view?+
Many do, and elevation is important here because height and vertical movement are the design point — especially for screening, where you need to show the planting reaches the required height. Plan and elevation views are listed on each download page.
Are the bamboo and grass CAD blocks free for commercial use?+
Yes. Every block downloads free in DWG and DXF with no signup, no watermark and no attribution requirement, and they are cleared for commercial project use.
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