A prickle: red bistort

There’s a spot I’ve had allocated for Persicaria – sorry, Bistorta (the name changes... give me strength) – amplexicaulis. Probably ‘Firetail’, or a similar variety. It’s been sitting vacant ever since Symphyotrichum turbinellum rudely refused to take there. Again. Honestly, this aster just hates my garden. At least, it hates the dappled shade it’s supposed to be able to cope with, and I keep insisting it must make its home. I’ll give it one more try, and in full sun, I guess.

Ah. I’ve been hijacked. This is about the bistort, not the aster. The end of the border where the path emerges into the open garden would be just the spot for a significant clump of the stuff, all bright green, lanceolate leaves and long red candles on sticks, which is just how the flowers look. Bistorts, like bullrushes, a masters at the marshmallow on a stick thing, but while some have the light pink and pillowy appearance of that confection others, like amplexicaulis, manage something a little more refined. A slender, elongated taper that you could be forgiven for thinking might be just the thing to put a match to as the sun begins to set over the darkling late-summer borders.

It might have to come to an arrangement with ‘Munstead Wood’, which is also in that spot, but this is something that’s likely to involve the bistort being sculpted (/hacked) around whatever space that precious rose decides it might like to occupy. I’d not want the latter to be inconvenienced in any way.

So the rose and the partial shade are fine. Even the ghostly manifestions of the acanthus that used to be here could be overcome, with something less than (but quite probably approaching) fastidious attention. What’s holding me back is the knowledge that persicarias appreciate a degree of moisture in the soil, and that’s not the natural condition of my borders at this point of a usual summer, let alone the one we’re currently experiencing. Without regular watering, both Persicaria runcinata ‘Purple Fantasy’ and microcephala ‘Red Dragon’ look most miffed in the ground, at least at first, and they’re supposed to be way more drought tolerant than the bistort we’re discussing here. Which brings me to the nub of the issue, the very point that sticks it to the whole ‘right plant, right place’ mantra and demands that it justify itself, and not just for being an unbearably smug sounding tautology that falls to bits if you look at it too closely. Because – and I hesitate to type ‘here’s the thing’, but here, in all frankness, it really is – sometimes I might want to grow not entirely the right plant in exactly the right place. I might even want to grow something patently ridiculous for the location, and my obsession could just see me succeed where others might have been put off by the dogma. Because this is what gardening’s about – my intention, meeting nature’s ground rules, and then (this is the important bit) the ensuing negotiation. If you want to grow that there, you’re going to have to xyz.

Well, we’re all going to have to xyz the heck out of our gardens in future, since the recent weather patterns are telling us that we can’t rely on what we used to know, and we need to plant for the future. And while I both as excited and daunted by the prospect of climate resilient planting as anyone else, I’m never going to give up a hankering for something that really shouldn’t work. Which might well include bistorts on dry baked summer clay – except it won’t be dry baked summer clay, because I’ll have mulched it, buried decaying would under it, and incorporated so much oraganic matter into its profile over winter that it’ll barely recognise itself.

There. I’ve talked myself into it. Though, at the height of summer, as we go into heatwave number five, only an idiot would plant a bistort now. Where can I get hold of some?

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