Many perennial plants, such as Echinacea (Coneflower), Phlox, Alchemilla mollis (Lady’s Mantle), Achillea (Yarrow), and Iris, complement alliums wonderfully. Another great option is peonies. Here, a white-flowered Peony and a purple-flowered Allium are paired.
Where in my garden should I put allium?
Avoid the error of poking the bulb into a hole you dug in arid, unforgiving soil and covering it with fertile, modified soil. When bulb roots swell, they require at least two inches of healthy soil.
The most crucial requirement for allium is a well-drained soil, as bulbs may rot in moist soil. In general, the soil in most garden beds is OK as long as it is kept moist but not soggy.
Space plants 8 to 12 feet apart for single intensive plantings, depending on the impact you want to achieve. Place accents up to 2′ apart if they have greater types. Many species do not spread at all, whilst some species spread rapidly through seeds or bulbils.
Planting: For a spring bloom, plant bulbs in the fall. In the fall, plant dormant allium bulbs in accordance with your growing zone. Place them in a well-drained sunny or partially shady spot at a depth of 2–3 times their diameter (4-6).
Allium may wait to be planted because it is incredibly hardy in a dormant state, but it must go into the ground a few weeks before the ground freezes in order to establish roots. Keep cold, dry, and hidden if storing for any period of time.
Alliums should they be planted together?
Alliums are a favourite among garden designers, and it is understandable why. With their striking shapes and glittering florets, these distinctive and incredibly appealing flower globes catch your attention. The seed heads remain interesting for months after the blooms have faded, and they bloom for weeks in late spring and early summer. Alliums are perennial plants that are consistently unaffected by deer or rats. Pollinators also adore them.
For ideas on how to design your own garden, consider how alliums and perennials are combined by garden designers. Continue reading to explore some instances of imaginative and surprising matching. (Note: Unlike herbaceous alliums like Allium ‘Millenium’ and Allium tuberosum, which are grown from fall-planted bulbs, this article focuses on perennial alliums.)
Combining Alliums with Other Perennials
Make your alliums dependent on each other. These flowers seem nicer when there are other plants growing beneath them because of their long, slender stems. The foliage of allium also disappears shortly after the flowering. You’ll be left with gaps if other plants aren’t there to fill them up.
Here’s another compelling argument in favour of planting your alliums in a bed of greenery. While the flowers are still in bloom, the leaves of some types, such as Purple Sensation and the majority of the big-headed species, start to turn yellow. The foliage of other perennials provides the finest cover for those leaves.
The perennial plants that go well with alliums are listed below. Many of them would be too tall later in the season. The perennials, however, are still young when the alliums bloom, so the scale still functions.
- Hosta
- Standing Sedum
- Decorative grasses
- Woman’s Mantle
- Nepeta (catmint)
- Salvia
- Lamb’s ears, or stachys
- Astilbe
- Lavender
- Geranium (cranesbill)
- Aquilegia (columbine)
- Dianthus (carnation)
- Santolina
- Peony
- Hemerocallis (daylily)
- Foxgloves
For more inspiration, consider the following alternative perennial and allium combinations:
Rock gardens benefit from Allium karataviense. Sedums like the golden “Angelina” have the ideal scale to work well as companions.
Nepeta and salvia nemerosa are underplanted with allium Mt. Everest in landscape architect Nick McCullough’s garden.
Plan for Contrasting Heights
While some alliums never grow taller than 6 inches, others can reach heights of almost 4 feet. This is why it’s critical to understand the types of alliums you’re planting and their intended locations.
The front of a flower bed is a good place to plant short ones like karataviense (6), ‘Graceful’ (10), christophii (18), and schubertii (15), as they are simple to admire. Place the tallest people in the back and the middle-sized people in the middle. Alternately, you may try a different strategy and utilise tall alliums like the sample “see through plants” below.
Get Creative and Experiment with Color and Form
In Staffordshire, England’s Trentham Gardens, I witnessed the arrangement that is depicted above. Large-headed alliums, possibly Gladiator, were coupled with waves of ornamental grass (Nassella tenuissima). It highlighted the individual features of these two quite different plants and was bold and unexpected in the best possible way. Do you have a spot in your garden that you could use this in?
Let the Seed Heads Linger
Be cautious when removing the wasted blooms from alliums once they have done flowering. Let the performance go on! The majority of species produce attractive seed heads that can last for several weeks or even months. This year, I didn’t remove the allium christophii until early September and brought the seed heads inside to enjoy around the home.
In the garden, allium seed heads look their best when planted in a location that is moderately open and not overly populated with other plants. This makes appreciating their distinctive shape simpler. Additionally, efficient air circulation keeps them dry, which makes them less likely to disintegrate.
Planning for Different Bloom Times
Each type of allium blooms at different times, as shown on our allium bloom time chart. This makes it simpler to prepare for certain plant combinations and to pace the bloom period such that alliums can bloom from May through early July.
A favourite springtime colour combination includes peony leaves with burgundy tips and allium christophii.
With alliums, what is off limits?
You should stay away from a few plants when planting your onion plants. Different plants have different interactions with one another and are not all good friends.
Asparagus is a summer vegetable that you should never grow close to onions. It’s preferable to place the two plants in totally different parts of the vegetable garden because asparagus is a perennial and takes years to establish. There is competition for soil nutrients when onions and asparagus are planted together.
Beans, peas, and the majority of the other crops in the legume family do poorly when grown near onions, among other vegetables. Beans and peas can suffer from the presence of allium family plants because they can impede their growth. Peas, fava beans, pole beans, bush beans, lentils, and other legumes are unable to coexist in a permanent and advantageous way due to a chemical incompatibility. Avoid growing these plants in the same bed as garlic, onions, leeks, and other alliums.
The allium family, like most plant families, is frequently affected by the same maladies and pests. Due of this, it’s advantageous to keep other allium family members (such as leeks, garlic, chives, shallots, and other onions) apart from one another. These plants will probably draw many of the same pests, such as onion flies and onion maggots, if they are planted together. These two pests have the potential to badly injure your plants and slow the development of your future onions.
Sage is another vegetable companion planting in the garden that should be avoided. Onions are not among the many veggies that sage is known to promote growth in. Sage should be kept well away from your onion crop since it might actually slow down the growth of your plants.
Additionally, the flavour of the turnips is lost when onions and turnips are planted together.
With a huge allium, what can you grow?
What to plant besides alliums
- Verbascum, salvia, and euphorbia. Euphorbia, salvia, and verbascum are growing alongside the allium “Mount Everest.”
- Verbascum and geum. Verbascum “Violetta,” Geum “Prinses Juliana,” and Allium “Purple Sensation”
- both erysimum and alstroemeria.
- Salvia, carex, and artemisia.
- cranesbill in white.
- Pennisetum sativum
ALLIUM PLANTING GUIDE
The allium family includes the chives in your herb garden, which are little, fluffy purple balls that bees and butterflies adore. Alliums used as ornaments, however, are anything but tiny. Big drama is what these enormous globes on tall stems are all about in your landscape. Alliums are a great choice if you are growing bulbs with kids since they enjoy the fact that when these blooms bloom, they frequently tower over them.
Garden & Container Planting
Alliums require a cold spell to establish their roots and get ready for spring, just like other flower bulbs do. So it’s time to start planting as soon as the first chill of fall appears in the air.
Although flower bulbs are hardy and simple to grow, they detest getting their feet wet since they can quickly decay if left to “bathe” in water. Therefore, avoid at all costs moist soil. this refers to locations where puddles are still visible 5–6 hours after a downpour. You can also improve possibly wet soil by incorporating organic material like peat, bark, or manure. The same motto applies when planting bulbs in containers: drainage, drainage, and more drainage. Purchase a container that has at least a few drainage holes at the bottom.
Because alliums require a lot of light to flourish, locations with less than full sun are not suitable.
Alliums must be buried deeply enough so that changes in the temperature above ground—either too warm or too cold—won’t influence them. Because containers can’t protect bulbs as well as mother earth can, it may be preferable to let your containers spend the winter indoors in a cool, dark, well-ventilated area where the temperature won’t rise above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, such as an unheated basement or garage, if you live in one of the hardiness zones 3 to 7.
The bulb is placed at the bottom of the hole with its sharp end facing up, and a hole three times as deep as the bulb’s height is dug to determine the optimal depth. When competing for nutrients with other bulbs, alliums perform worse, therefore it’s best to space them 6 to 8 inches apart.
After planting, it’s crucial to give the bulbs plenty of water to help them settle and develop roots rapidly, but after that, you won’t need to water them again. All that’s left to do is wait patiently for spring to come and surprise you with the fruits of your labour and for winter to work its magic underground.
Alliums don’t typically need watering during the flowering season, but you can water them if there hasn’t been any rain for three to five days.
Don’t trim the foliage of alliums right away after they have stopped flowering; through photosynthesis, the leaves will produce the nutrition the bulb needs for its subsequent growing season. The leaves will naturally turn yellow and die back after a few weeks, at which point you can remove it. The bulb will now enter dormancy and won’t require watering again until the following spring.
How to plant alliums in your garden:
- Wait till the soil is 60°F or colder before planting. This will happen around September or October in the North and October or November in the South.
- Choose a location in your garden that has soil that drains properly and receives full sun.
- The allium bulbs should be planted with their pointed ends facing up, 4 to 8 inches deep, and 6 to 8 inches apart.
- once, and then wait until spring.
- Don’t remove the leaf from alliums after they bloom. Remove it once it has entirely withered and become yellow.
How to plant alliums in containers:
- Wait until the soil temperature is at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit and the weather is chilly. This will happen around September or October in the North and October or November in the South.
- Choose a location in your garden that receives direct sun.
- Find a container with good drainage, fill it with loose soil, and make sure that water won’t collect and pool at the bottom.
- The allium bulbs should be buried in the ground with their pointed ends facing up, 4 to 8 inches deep, and 6 to 8 inches apart. You can try putting the bulbs closer together since containers frequently have a small amount of room, but make sure they never touch.
- If you reside in hardiness zones 3–7, you can water well once and wait until spring, or you can bring the containers inside and let them spend the winter in a cool place like an unheated garage or basement.
Special effects
You can choose the extremely regulated technique if you prefer order and cleanliness or if you want to maximise the wow-factor alliums can provide to your garden or container. Grow your alliums in straight rows with roughly 10 bulbs spaced closely apart (you might want to add some fertiliser to the soil to make sure they still get all the nutrients they need). Growing a row of 10 taller alliums, like Purple Sensation, behind a row of 10 slightly shorter ones, like Azureum, can produce an even more dramatic effect.
how do you dry alliums?
Pick off seedheads that are starting to fade and store them for a few months in a cold, dry place, such a shed or cellar. To use as Christmas decorations, I like to dry my seedheads and then spray-paint them silver.
are alliums edible?
Since they are all members of the allium family, onions, leeks, and garlic are often consumed foods. Alliums are theoretically edible, but beware eating any that are designed to be aesthetic garden plants because they may have been chemically treated.
are alliums good for bees?
In the spring, bees and other pollinators are all over our alliums. Our neighbourhood beekeeper also claims that the honey doesn’t taste oniony.
do alliums need staking?
Even the tallest alliums won’t need staking since their sturdy stems can hold them if they are planted deeply enough in full sun (so they don’t extend towards the light) and in a sheltered location (so they don’t blow over in the wind).