PURPLE power

Globes of alliums make a sensational addition to a border

- NICOLA STOCKEN

It’s hard to imagine life without onions, either wafting delicious garlicky odours around the kitchen or as zesty ornamental flowers that spice up any garden with their luscious blooms in pinks, purples, yellows, blues or whites. Peeling back the many layers of the ornamental onion family reveals such an amazing array of different flower forms, colours and sizes, and unbelievably, they are all closely related.

Ornamental onions range from magenta Allium oreophilum midgets to supersized Allium ‘Gladiator’; from the small snowy globes of ‘Ivory Queen’ to the lofty heights of ‘Mont Blanc’ or ‘Mount Everest’; blue Allium caeruleum or golden Allium moly, blush Allium narcissiflorum or, last but by no means least, the ubiquitous ‘Purple Sensation’ — a legend that more than lives up to its billing. Nor are alliums super choosy about where they live — as long as it’s sunny and doesn’t waterlog, they settle happily in beds and borders, while shorter species suit pots and containers, and the smallest seek out alpine rockeries.

The name ‘Allium’ derives from the Latin word for garlic. The bulb has been grown for thousands of years, valued as much for its pungent flavour as for warding off vampires or treating infections — modern science shows garlic contains allicin, which accounts for its antibacterial properties.