Thistle do nicely

Long-flowering, striking and loved by bumblebees, the plume thistle has pride of place in Toby’s garden

- Toby

ONE man’s meat is another man’s chlorinated chicken, just as one gardener’s favourite flower is someone else’s weed.

But unlike the chemically cleaned American poultry (soon coming to a supermarket near you), there are weeds so beautiful and so well behaved that they deserve a place in any border. And the plume thistle or (as botanists like to call it) Cirsium rivulare is my favourite. Harking from over ‘Le Puddle’ in France, it’s been on the run in Britain, gently spreading along riversides and brooks for so long it’s now considered a legitimate, if naturalised, part of our flora.

I have two in my borders and I love them. Over the summer, they produce a succession of pinky red thistles, each the size and shape of a champagne cork topped with a fluffy tuft of petals. Like all thistles, cirsium is part of the aster clan with the daisy and dandelion, and like them shares the family trait of being a nectar bar for bees.