This annual was originally grown as a vegetable, for its young foliage and stems have a salty, spinach-like taste. The red-leaved form, however, has entranced many and is now more of an ornamental than anything else. Once seen backlit by the sun, the color of bruised raspberries, red orach becomes an absolute necessity in the spring and early summer garden. If allowed to grow on rich, moist soil, it can reach five to six feet.
Full sun is best.
Red orach mingles well with hot colors brilliant orange-red Oriental poppies, crimson fernleaf peonies, scarlet Maltese cross and with pale colors and white. It frames the shimmering pale yellow blossoms of the old-fashioned bearded iris Flavescens . A friend and I salvaged a small start of this iris from a group of luminescent clumps that grew out in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization, on the rolling high plains at the Wyoming-Nebraska border, survivors of a vanished homestead. Bearded iris snobs disdain its dog-ear shape and small flowers, but I am honored to have it grace my garden. Red orach is just the right companion.