What are those Purple Things?
Judy Ziemba, State Chairman

That’s what the man said to me as he walked through Ted Weber’s garden in Streator, Illinois. We were visiting gardens and nurseries with the Central Illinois Hosta Society bus trip and every time the gentleman saw me as we progressed westward through Utica, he asked for the name again. Since it was July, many gardens we visited had purple things standing tall between the stately peonies, daylilies and hostas. One fellow traveler called them “Flowering onions” but the official name of the family is Allium and it does include garden onions and garlic, but everything in this family blooms if allowed. Sometimes we don’t want them to flower if we had hoped to store the onions for winter flavoring. However, there are some super ornamental varieties to add a delightful surprise to the early summer perennial border. They are rarely bothered by critters including deer and will grow among ferns and hostas in the shade or in a sunny plot with hemerocallis and other sun-loving plants. They have a long vase life as a cut flower and even longer dried in flower arrangements.

The gigantic globes of purple which seem to pop out of nowhere in late spring and summer are bulbs which need to be planted in the fall when the bulbs are fresh, varied and available in garden centers. You have to look past the daffodil and tulip bulb display to find them, but it is worth your search. The ornamental bulbs produce a rosette of green leaves in spring to remind you they are present and then produce an explosion of loose or tight umbels in many colors, typically purples and lavenders, in early summer.

The family is quite varied in size but can loosely be divided in the tall, large-flowered ones, the smaller rock garden varieties and then the in between types. In the tall group, most are easy to grow with 6" plus size blooms like Allium albopilosum, A. christophii (Star of Persia) and A. giganteum. In this group the named hybrids include Ambassador, Firmament, Gladiator, Globemaster, Pinball Wizard, ‘Beau Regard’ and Purple Sensation, all ranking as real eyecatchers. My favorite to grow and dry for arrangements is Allium schubertii. The spidery orbs of florets and appear as an exploding star. If you desire white florets, try A. ‘Mt.Everest’, A. stipitatum ‘White Giant’ or A. ‘Mars’ with large white blooms. My first attempt to grow a white allium produced a very short stem. It was A. ‘Ivory Queen’ which is a karativiense variety and low growing with large flower head.

There are many small alliums that thrive in the rock garden or dry, sunny position. H. flavum tops out at a foot tall with many yellow hanging bell flowers. A. moly, known as Society Garlic or Lily Leek, will develop into broad clumps with perky yellow umbels. A. cernuum is a tiny deep violet 6" version for the rock garden and A. caeruleum is a Siberian native that grows to 12" with bright blue flowers. Other blue varieties are A. tanguticum ‘Blue Skies’ or A. tanguticum ‘Summer Beauty’. Summer Beauty is a darker blue. A. oreophilum is rated as a super deep pink dwarf with a pleasant fragrance. With alliums you only get the onion odor when you damage the stem or leaves; the florets can be quite pleasant Among the in- between sized alliums is the taller at 20" Drumstick allium (A. sphaerocephalon) with reddish purple oval flower heads. A. roseum will grow in our Zone 4-6 gardens with large pink florets in 4" umbels. A weird member of the family is A.’Hair’. It is a sport of the drumstick allium and bears unequal length bunches of greenish yellow and truly illustrates a “bad hair” day. A. bulgaricum and its shorter cousin Nectaroscordum siculum, have pendulous orbs of purple, green/white bells. A. ‘Silverspring’ has a packed white ball shaped head with rose centers

For a dramatic addition to your July 2008 garden, check out the Allium bulb counter this autumn for your personal display of fireworks. They return each summer to celebrate year after year. Local garden centers receive the bulb in September but you may also want to look at mail order catalogs specialists including Van Engelen. John Scheepers, or McClure and Zimmerman.