Growing purple alliums

[Primrose]

Have been browsing through a bulb catalogue and am tempted to order some large purple alliums for one of my borders. The catalogue says "Plant amongst perennials and leave to naturalise". Can anybody tell me how quickly they naturalise. I imagine they're from the same family as chives and wonder whether, they proliferate as quickly as chives do.

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Primrose, i planted some of the large alliums in an unmown section of grass for one of my customers two years ago, and they are very slowly multiplying.
They may multiply quicker in a border with less competition. Also where i planted them the soil is very heavy and i am sure they would appreciate lighter soil.
I don't think they would get to the point of being invasive though.

[Jenny Green]

Planted them in my border and they got successively smaller then died out.
So kind of the opposite of proliferating.
Sorry not to be of more help!

[Clive.]

Hello,
We planted Allium christophii 10+ years ago....they survived ok and have also seeded about..but in a quite nice way..although there are currently a few too many in one spot in our herb garden...which we need to remember to dig out during autumn border digging...or perhaps now if there were more hours in the day..
Generally these christophii are left to their own devices to appear where they will as they often get inadvertantly moved a little in autumn dig through.

We have a few Allium shubertii which have seemed to survive ok.

..and a few Giganteum??...although not sure I have the name correct. ..it is tall and a big flower....this one produces 2 bulbs from the one planted each year with an absolutely flat joint at the 2 new bulbs join. We lift and replant these rather than leave in situ.

One thug seems to be Allium sphaerocephalon ???..which has tall thin stems with small flower heads..it looks lovely and gets covered in bees but has all but become boss of one area of a border needing persistant efforts to keeps it in check.

Our soil is alkaline and medium to heavy...and very wet at the moment
Clive.

[Primrose]

Thanks folks. From what you say it sounds as if they can be perpetuated either by splitting the bulbs as new ones form, or by letting them seed themselves. Think I'll give them a try although they'll have to fight for space in a rather dry border. Still, chives have thrived there so it's worth a try although I suspect the giant ones are probably quite heavy feeders.

[Clive.]

Hello Primrose,

A quick update to my original reply...

I have been back to work this evening to take a party on a garden tour..I checked with Paul HG and he tells me that the ones I thought were Giganteum are in fact "Globemaster".

Clive.

[mandylew]

I had a few of these a couple of years ago, trouble with the seedlings they were so tiny, it would be impossible to not accidentally weed them out, unless you were not going to weed for a couple of years i think they would get lost, I did try potting up a few, but they really didnt get much bigger, the bulbs that come of the main one of mine were like those little bulblets you get on gladioli, and again would take years to get to a decent size. They are lovely but to colonate a big area i think would take a lot of time or be expensive.

mandy

[Primrose]

Thank you both again. Looks like I'll have to be careful where I weed if I'm hoping to let them naturalise. Still, at least it will be me who is doing the weeding as I'm more likely to recognise the seedlings. My OH certainly wouldn't. He went out and bought an aubergine the other day when I had some ready for picking from my plants !!

[mandylew]

http://www.jparkers.co.uk/index.cfm?fus ... ory_id=458

all orders from the autumn catalogue get 15 'purple sensation' free