The Allium Home Page

	Easy-to-grow Alliums provide one of the most effective ways to ensure continuing color and beauty in your garden after spring-flowering bulbs have faded. While you wait for the cheery blooms of summer flowers, it¹s easy to enjoy the outstanding features of Alliums:
Exceptionally easy to grow with little concern for soil conditions. Intriguing, unique character of blooms that are a delight to behold. Great ornamental value after flowering because the flower heads continue to provide an interesting display even after the colors have faded. Great in dried arrangements. Ability to naturalize exceptionally well by multiplying year after year for increased beauty. Distasteful flavor for animals, so they won't eat any part of them. Attractive to hummingbirds!
	Alliums come in all shapes and sizes and are lots of fun to grow. They fit into almost any garden setting and provide a much-needed bridge of color between spring and summer flowers. Sometimes called “ornamental onions”, Alliums do best in full sun with well drained, fertile soil and good moisture. Plant them in September or October about 8-10” deep. Allium really look best in the company of other summer bloomers.
Sweet alyssum, rock cress, bachelor's buttons, coreopsis, sweet William, foxglove, baby's breath, daylily, iris, red hot poker, coralberry, barberry, Japanese Maple, Deutzia rosea, weigela, and Geranium pretense are just some of the companion plants that look fantastic with Alliums.

Some of our favorite Alliums

Azure Allium
	Charming flax blue spheres, 2-3" wide, with masses of star-shaped florets tightly clustered atop sturdy stems. Exotic blooms retain their colour up to a month. Superb in the middle of the perennial bed with Drumstick Allium. Allium caeruleum Zones 3-8. 4+ cm bulbs. (buy)

Persian Blue Allium
	Imposing blooms come highly recommended by our Hillegom garden experts. Perfect spheres are actually hundreds of clustered, star-shaped, purple-blue florets. They create a dazzling effect as they appear to rise almost overnight. Allium 'Purple Sensation' Zones 3-8. 12+ cm bulbs. (buy)

Allium Roseum
	Delicate, non-fading, little pink blooms with light green highlights are lovely and long-lasting in borders or rock gardens. Wonderful as cut flowers. Fragrant, too. Zones 3-8. 4-5 cm bulbs. (buy)

Quick Allium Facts:

Allium is the onion genus with about 1250 species, mostly classified in its own family Alliaceae. Some botanists used to classify it in the lily family (Liliaceae).

They are perennial bulbous plants. They occur in temperate climates of the northern hemisphere, except for a few species occurring in Chile (as Allium juncifolium), Brazil (Allium sellovianum) or tropical Africa (Allium spathaceum ). They can vary in height between 10 cm and 150 cm. The flowers form an umbel at the top of a leafless stalk. The bulbs can vary between very small to rather big and form little bulbs around the old one.

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Asparagales
Family: Alliaceae
Subfamily: Allioideae
Tribe: Allieae
Genus: Allium

Some species of alliums are bread for their architectural and bright purple flowers to be used as border plants. These include Allium christophii.

Planting Instructions:

Allium (Flowering Onion) SPACING: 3–12½, DEPTH: 1–6½, SUN: 1–2
Most Alliums grow best in full sun. Those we offer require well-drained soil and are longest
ived in locations where the soil is on the dry side during summer dormancy. Plant Alliums
more shallowly than comparably sized bulbs, just one to two times the diameter of
he bulb deep. The leaf tips of many varieties, especially the tall ones, begin to brown before
bloom time; interplant with leafy perennials to mask them. Remove the spent flowers of
all varieties but ‘Globemaster’, which is sterile, if you wish to prevent them from self-sowng.
For best results, fertilize in both fall and spring.