Are you ordering any allium bulbs for the rock garden?

Hi everybody,

I am placing orders for my spring bulbs and would like to add some allium for my (faux) rock garden...are there certain ones you might recommend?

Also names of recommended suppliers?

Thanks. t.

Hi, Tabasco. The best bulbs I got this year were from Bulbmeister and Terra Ceia Farms. Head and shoulders above all the rest. Not sure Terra Ceia has allium, but I know Bulbmeister does.

Thanks, I had forgotten about Bulbmeister. Will look them up. What did you order from them?

Well, I just went to their website and it sounds like Bulbmeister isn't shipping because they are moving their nursery...

I'd like to hear suggestions for allium species too. I tried ceruleum this year.
(I got them from Van Engelen - sure were a lot for a good price!) They added
dots of blue all along my perennial beds. I've got a couple of pic's from
mid-June when they were blooming.
Tam

And a nice combination with carnations

I'm sorry Bulbmeister isn't open right now, Tabasco. Keep an eye on the Website, though, because it really will be worth it. I didn't get any Allium from him, but I got Anomatheca, Babiana, Bessera, Bloomeria, Calochortus, Crinum, Cyrtanthus, Gloriosa, Hippeastrum, Nerine, Tigridia, and Tritonia, most of them in several different varieties. Every single bulb was perfect, as if I had hand-picked them locally.

There are many of the smaller alliums that would do well in a rock garden. You could consider beesianum, sikkimense, caeruleum, amabile, cyathorum var farreri, dichlamydeum, murrayanum, insubricum, oreophilum, cernuum, thunbergii, flavum, neapolitanum and callimischon.

also moly (but it can spread), unifolium, splendens, spirale, senescens (another potential spreader), saxatile, angulosum and falcifolium. Warning, cyathophorum farreri is a rampant spreader..nice but overwhelming.

It should be noted, that most of these alliums mentioned by me and Galanthophile are grown from seed rather than being readily available as dormant bulbs. The summer-bloomers never go completely dormant thus are not sold as bare bulbs. Only the spring bloomers are commonly sold as bulbs and many of them, like Purple Sensation, Gladiator, giganteum, aflatuense, nigrum, christophii, are much too large for the rock garden. Of the small ones, you're likely to find only a handful such as unifolium (aka roseum), moly, oreophilum (aka ostrowskianum), neopolitanum, karataviense (can get away with it in a larger rock garden), sphaerocephalum (tall but willowy so you also get away with it) and caeruleum.

thank you for all the good allium information...I hadn't realized that little rock garden alliums were more readily available as seeds than bulbs.

I have tried most of the smaller spring bloomers grown from bulbs (purchased from Van Engelen and Brent and Becky's a year ago), but will look for some of the seed grown allium on the internet.

Thanks again. t.