I really don't grow any of the spring blooming alliums any longer. Too many problems with squirrels chewing them to bits which surprised the he&& out of me. I thought for sure they would leave onion-type plants alone. They don't.

However one of my favs is a summer blooming allium - tanguticum var. Blue Skies. (Squirrels don't touch it) The foliage stays lovely all season, it blooms for a good 6 weeks and makes a great cut flower.

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Kevin

I really like all of the large headed, tall alliums that I have grown. Unlike Kevin, I have had no problems at all with any critters eating or digging them up. Globemaster is particularly nice due to the longer bloom period. Be aware that for many of them, the foliage is dying as they are blooming (at least at this latitude) so plant them where something will hide the yellowing foliage, which detracts from the bloom. In addition to Globemaster, I have Giganteum, Mount Everest, Gladiator and probably some others that I have forgotten. In my garden they slowly increase, mostly through seeding since I like the effect of the dried seed heads. I have in the past planted some of the smaller ones, but I don't like them as well as they don't have the impact that the larger ones have.

I haven't found Allium giganteum to be a very vigorous or long-lived species here, but the various hybrids are great. As mentioned above, Mount Everest is nice just to have some white in the mix for contrast.

One of the very best, though, imho, is Star of Persia Allium. I've had flower heads the size of basketballs, and the plant is very quick to increase, by both division and seed. Makes a wonderful late spring/early summer display.

Here is a link that might be useful: Star of Persia description at White Flower Farm

I have a few some have died out, some are hanging in. Three of my favorites are christophii, karataviense and schubertii.

Annette

I think I am done buying the spring blooming bulb Alliums. This year none of my 'Purple Sensation' came back (due to the wet winter/spring we had this year perhaps?), and the $$ A. schubertii I got the year before only sent up a pitiful sprout of foliage. The Allium azureum (aka A. caeruleum) I got for cheap last year were nice however:
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Not going to hold my breath that they will be long lived though. If I do get any more ornamental Alliums it will be more of the clumping perennial types, like my A. moly, A. senescens var. glaucum, and the good old chives (lovely in bloom).
CMK

I started out with 4 bulbs of Globemaster in 2001. They were divided and spread throughout the front bed when it was expanded in 2007.

May 31, 2010
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You can see I missed a couple of clumps as these are blooming in the original bed area May 31, 2010

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I also have several other varieties including Gigantum which needs to be moved as hasn't done much where it is planted and many smaller ones that were given to me so I don't know the names. Two that are mixed together bloom in the summer, small white ones followed later by small purple ones. I rescued a lovely blue one from a yard being turned into a parking lot. It was growing in a shaded area and was tiny and delicate. I moved it to full sun and got this in the spring, about 18 inches high

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Several varieties of allium seed were part of a trade and wintersown two years ago. Hope to see them bloom this spring/summer.

Thanks everyone for the beautiful photos and ideas. These are so beautiful. I think I'll just keep adding more different varieties each year. I really like the way they look.

I saw people spray painting the dried seed heads for the 4th of July. They take paper plates and cut a slit through them. This is placed under the bloom to keep paint from reaching the stems. They painted them red white and blue. It really looked nice. I like that they look so nice even when the flowers are dried.

-Ech, I also once used the dried heads on a sort of "natural" decorated Christmas tree. The giant head of the A. schubertii worked great at the top in place of the star!

-mnwsgal, looks like your parking lot find allium might be the same thing as my A. azurea. Glad you were able to save it ;-)
CMK

What a great genus! I have a very cool, autumn-flowering A. thunbergii 'Ozawa'.

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I snagged a bunch of them at the big box store's clearance last year too... though not 150!

Chiltern seeds has a bunch of allium varieties. I tried some of the black flowered version (Allium wallichii Black Form) but they didn't make it. Might try it direct sow in the spring to see if that helps... though i would think it would take a long time to bloom.

http://www.chilternseeds.co.uk/list.php?type=search&value=allium

I've seen photos like the one above of sprayed seed heads. Not sure if I like them but they are certainly attention grabbers. Maybe I could make a bouquet and put a pot out for a short time, like 4th of July. I think my neighbors would be amazed.

Such pretty pictures on this thread! Some of the Allium flowers look very blue. I even like those painted seedheads, although they're a little hokey.

I have the usual Allium schoenoprasum, onion chives I think, they are lovely and dependable. Bought a small bag of 8 bulbs of some other Allium with a dark purple flower, and planted them this fall, but can't remember what they were and didn't save the label! Oh well will find out next Spring.

A few years ago I winter-sowed Allium cernuum, native nodding onion. Allium is a little slow from seed but once they get going they expand and reseed.
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I have planted them several times, and they don't seem to come back. Sometimes I get just the foliage, and no bloom. This year I have purchased some bulbs again (it was 75% off sale - could not resist), so will give them another chance.
They are gorgeous though, and make a big impact in a garden.

I picked up two bags of bulbs at a warehouse store back in August and planted them in various beds around the garden. I love how big and bold they are so I hope they do well. One bag had 10 or 12 of the giant ones; the other had 30 of the less-dramatic sized bulbs. I planted them behind other perennials based on height but I guess it was a smart move given the ratty foliage right around the time they bloom.

The foliage on my alliums is lush and green when they are blooming. The large allium's foliage doesn't start to die back until later. The smaller summer bloomers don't die back until frost. But the foliage by itself is a bit boring so nice to have other plants growing in front of it.

Yes, I've spray painted the allium heads in my garden to prolong the look of it, but only the original purple. I've had visitors think they were real and say "I've never seen those bloom this late."

When planting alliums (apart from a few exceptions like Globemaster) remember that they will seed around, some quite vigourously, and some varieties more than others. Allium cernuum (native), allium Purple Sensation, allium karataviense Ivory Queen, garlic chives, and others have all seeded quite widely in my garden. This can be good, but it can also become a problem. My favourite allium is the very late blooming A.thunbergii 'Ozawa' of which cpg posted a picture. Blooms into late November here, I kid you not. Physostegia Vivid and hardy chrysanthemum Mei-Kyo are the only other plants that bloom so late for me.

This is such a fascinating thread. Thank you so much for starting it! This is often such an overlooked group.

I love alliums and because I just purchased a property with a back and front yard after living in a condo for many years, I went a little hog wild this fall with planting them. I have planted the following:

As garden show plants:
Ambassador
Gladiator
Globemaster

As garden fillers and unifiers:
Allium sphaerocephalon
A. cristophii
A. karataviense
A. caeruleum
A. oreophilum (ostrowskianum)

Next year, I would like to add many more, especially those that flower later in the season like Allium 'Millennium' and Allium thungergii 'Ozawa'. I also want to focus on different colors not represented above like yellows and whites.

I have Dilys Davies book from the early 1990s called "Alliums" which discusses most of the species and cultivars known at that time for ornamental garden use. It is funny, because the author mentions the "spectacular" Globemaster as still in propagation and not yet ready for general release to the public, LOL! It is still a worthwhile book, however, if you can find a used copy.

Tovah Martin has a wonderful blog called Plantswise in which she discusses Allium karataviense and Allium sphaerocephalon:

Here is a link that might be useful: PlantsWise--Allium karataviense

And here is the link for Tovah Martin's discussion of Allium sphaerocephalon:

Here is a link that might be useful: PlantsWise--Allium sphaerocephalon

These pics are of Gladiator. Lovely blooms on May 7th. But see the brown frost bitten leaves in the second pic which was taken 5 days earlier. This happens every year, lovely blooms high up, with the brown foilage below, and it gets worse daily. I keep promising myself that I will eliminate them, but I love their effect in the beds in early spring.

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yeah... gotta love the yellow leaves. I ended up just continually cutting them back to green on the larger alliums i have that aren't covered well with perennials like yours.

That does look ugly. One solution might be to put some tall thin pots in front of them, just tall enough to cover the leaves. The pots could be filled with spring bulbs or pansies or pussy willow branches, etc. Or those aluminum buckets. Something that can be moved after the other plants grow taller.

Or paint them with green spray paint like the paint used on the seed heads.

If those Allium were growing in a prominent spot in my garden, I'd be out there with the scissors clipping away the brown tips of that foliage! Since I have zillions of bulbs and Irises in the front garden, I sometimes do that with the foliage that is dying back, but not quite fully dormant yet.

^^^Don't throw those away! The blooms look fantastic. I would put them behind a medium-height perennial to hide the foliage. In fact, they could probably be coming up from WITHIN a late-emerging perennial which would completely hide the foliage by the time it starts to die back; unlike most bulbs, alliums re-charge BEFORE blooming rather than after, so if the leaves are covered while the flowers are in bloom, it won't affect next year's show.

Besides, allium flowers are so tall you have a rare opportunity to mix them up in your garden and make the display all about the flower.

I have been trying to come up with something that by late April would be tall enough to cover that ugliness, but here is zone 5 I haven't found anything that will beat the allium's early emergence and rapid growth. Behind the allium is a clump of grass and some daylilies around the area but they have a long way to go to be of any help. I do cut back the browned leaves often, but really that doesn't make it look much better.

Any suggestions of what to plant that would mask that frost bitten foliage in late April would be appreciated.

Echinaceamaniac.. I am looking forward to your spring and summer pics of your new alliums. Your garden pictures are always inspiring.

gazania - how about baptisia australis/false indigo? Mine was up and already covered with buds by the middle of May this year. It gets about 3 ft. tall and the foliage is gorgeous right through the season.

gazania, what is that yellow flowering thing in the bed behind your alliums? Wouldn't that work? It looks tall enough.

melvalena, that yellow is a cushion spurge. It is actually just about 1 foot tall. If I cut the damaged leaves on the allium to the ground, I suppose it might work.
gardenweed,I have baptisia in another bed. I think it would be too tall and obscure the blooming allium if planted in front. But I wonder if I could get the allium to come up in the center area of a baptisia so that they intermingle. An interesting thought. I'll have to go back to some old pictures to see what the baptisia does and when it does it.