Gardening Basics - Monthly Tips

Monthly Tips

June - Plant of the Month

Alliums - Ornamental Onions

An enormous purple ball bounces above a sea of green plants. As you grab hold and lean down to see if this beauty has a scent, the smell of onions wafts up to you. Is this some escapee from the vegetable patch? No, it is one of multitudinous tribe of plants related to the common onion; it's an ornamental onion or Allium.

Ornamental alliums only smell of onions if you touch them. They come in a wide range of sizes from 10" high lollipops to colossal balls the size of a child's head atop 4' stems. You can choose from white, yellow, pink, purple or blue. Flowerheads come in the standard ball shape, starbursts and little fireworks displays.

I like ornamental onions for a couple of reasons. Every garden requires plants that stand up boldly and demand to be noticed. Tall balls of flowers certainly do that. Most ornamental onions don't require a lot of ground space and can be tucked in among other plants in groups. Lastly, they are low maintenance.

I'm particularly fond of Allium cristophii, the Star of Persia (photo right). The flowerheads are open starbursts of lavender florets, 8-12" across and stand 2-3' tall. They dry to a tan color but hold their form and don't flop over. I like how they look when dry and leave them standing, but my little 90 year old neighbor always thinks I'm just a sloppy gardener when I don't remove them right away. (One woman apparently spray painted the dried heads blue and stuck them back in the garden.)

Ornamental onions hail from Central Asia and the Mediterranean which gives you some idea of what they like in the garden - sun and well-drained soils. They don't approve of sitting around in boggy ground. They self-sow for me but not aggressively, mostly just around the base of the existing plant.

It is cheapest to buy alliums as bulbs, rather than potted plants. This fall, you'll be able to find bulbs of a few types in the nurseries, but I'd recommend one of the specialty bulb growers. I've ordered bulbs from McClure and Zimmerman and Brent and Becky's Bulbs. If you want to get an idea of how large the big flowerheads are, go to the Van Dyck's website.

So grow some onions - they're not just for eating anymore.

I discovered the key to having few weeds and little yard maintenance a few years ago. I had one part of the yard that had a hebe (evergreen to the ground), hypericum (evergreen to the ground), garrya (evergreen but with space beneath it), rugosa rose (deciduous shrub), libertia (evergreen grass-like plant) and lilies. This area looked good all year and tended to be my favorite part of the yard for that reason, and because I did very little to maintain it. It had about 2 really showy months, and there were some flowers scattered throughout the rest of the summer. The only places I needed to weed were under the garrya and the rose. (If I'd had groundcovers, I could even have taken care of most of that.) I pruned bits and pieces of the garrya and the rose (maybe an hour of pruning during the year). Sometimes, I'd go cut back the hebe after blooming. (With hedge trimmers this is fast but rather unsightly until it grows out, or it can be done slowly but attractively by hand.)

So there is the key - cover the ground with something evergreen and few weeds can manage to come up. Planting only evergreens is boring, so you will want some areas that have perennials for their big seasonal show and also some woody deciduous plants to lighten things up and give you varied interest throughout the year. To keep the weeds down in the open areas, mulch with wood chips (3" or so) or 2" of compost, or composted dairy manure (a bit smelly at first). Also, put some mulch under the evergreens (but not up against their trunks), it conserves water and provides organic material for the plants as it breaks down and is incorporated into the soil.

If you plant things that have adequate space to grow to their natural shape and size so you don't have to keep chopping at them, you will reduce your maintenance. If you plant things that like the conditions that already exist in that locale, they are unlikely to have disease or insect problems or fail to thrive. Is it sunny and dry or sunny and wet? The same plants won't be happy in each.

That's it. Three little paragraphs to make your garden look nice year round, reduce the time you spend on chores and cut down on your water bill. You may not want to rip everything out and start fresh but keep these few principles in mind when you are making changes, and you can evolve your way to an attractive, lower maintenance yard. Perhaps then you will have both the time and the inclination to just hang out, soak up the sun and the scents, and enjoy the garden.

[I naturally have no good picture of the described garden. The photo at top shows the hebe, top center, and garrya, tall on left. Stair planting with lavender, evergreen penstemon and iris and self-sown forget-me-nots also low maintenance.]