The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

the times Saturday April 30 2022

18 Outside

and dark clove-pinks. And the wonder of

all these clumping alliums is that just as

they start to grow in spring

you can pull the clump part into tiny

pieces to produce several plants with

great ease. A potful planted now will

potentially quadruple by next

March. When you do it, of course,

you will be bathed in that curious

smell that comes with handling

all members of the Amaryllidace-

ae family; nothing that’s going

to make you cry but enough to tell

you you’re definitely in the

company of onions.

Medusa’s Hair (A. Medusa)

Similar to the previous allium but with

more of a twist to its foliage in early

Q My box bushes have

avoided box blight

and box caterpillar, and

the new growth a few

weeks back was even

unaffected by a light

covering of snow.

But then a frost caught

it and the soft shoots

have since turned white.

Any advice?

T Simmings

A There will be new buds

right behind those dead

shoots, so rather than

make a thousand

vulnerable wounds by

trimming back, I’d let

nature take its course.

The dead leaves will

blacken and eventually

fall away. Once the new

growth arrives feed the

plant — seaweed extract

is particularly effective.

Q I fancy making my

single-trunked red-

flowered thorn tree into

a multistemmed tree like

a craggy wild hawthorn.

It has some suckers

coming from the base

and I was hoping to let

them develop alongside

the existing trunk.

Would that work?

T Smailes

A Probably not. Chances

are it’s a grafted tree.

Those suckers will be

coming from a plain

white wild hawthorn root

stock, completely

different to your red-

flowered trunk. You

ought to cut them off

before they swamp the

tree. At a push you could

cut the red trunk off at

30cm to make it branch

out low down, but that

really would make those

suckers go crazy. I’d leave

well alone.

Q We want to buy a

gooseberry bush and

have room for just one.

What sort are best for

making jam? I wondered

about buying a pink

dessert variety so we

wouldn’t have to add

so much sugar.

H Callery

A You may be right about

the sugar, but in my

experience the simple

green varieties, sour

and tangy, pass most

flavour into jams, pies

and fools. The pink

ones when cooked can

be insipid.

Send your questions to

stephen.anderton@

thetimes.co.uk

season. It is this, combined with the clump-

ing-allium habit of hoisting the flower

buds from a snakelike droop to a fully open

drumstick, that has led to the plant’s

dangerous name.

Best growing conditions

All these alliums enjoy a moist soil. That

said, they really don’t care and their long

white roots will delve down to find mois-

ture in the driest of soils and seasons. The

only problem is that, in drought, they may

carry some yellow outer leaves. And

whereas sappy-leaved chives will with-

stand being sheared and regrown again

and again, the leathery-leaved species I

suspect are not up for it. Still it’s a rare

problem: most of the time they are

utterly trouble-free.

about its flavour. (Our native wild garlic,

or ramsons, is an allium of course, Allium

ursinum, and its leaf is a very pleasant,

mild alternative to the normal culinary

garlic. What a weed, though! I’d

not plant it into anything but a

wild garden.)

Ageing chive (A. senescens)

My favourite of the perennial alliums,

which the RHS with its passion for creat-

ing common names has christened “the

ageing chive”. Still I am undeterred. It has

lavender-pink hemispherical heads on

wiry triangular 15cm stalks, rising from

clumps of flat, swirling, foliage and it’s

worth getting a form with good grey foli-

age like the subspecies glaucum, which

really sets off the flowers.

I use it as a path edg-

ing where it makes

an excellent con-

trast with the

silky foliage of

lamb’s lugs

Alliums: not just for spring

Stephen Anderton

picks the best ones

to plant now for

fabulous colour

later in the year

I

expect you are used to thinking of

alliums as those white-skinned bulbs

you plant in autumn and the tall

purple drumstick flowers that follow

in May/June? They are rather won-

derful, aren’t they, whether you have

them in a border or manage to grow

them in thin grass to beef up your meadow

garden. There have been some years at the

Chelsea Flower Show when you couldn’t

move for the things.

But not all alliums are bulbs. Some of

them are clump-forming perennials, ad-

mittedly with a rather bulbous base to each

stem, and these you can plant now because

they flower mid to late-season. They’re

totally trouble-free and some of them I

absolutely would not be without.

You might even find that you are already

growing one already in your garden –

Allium schoenoprasum, otherwise known

as chives. It’s not strictly speaking an

ornamental, though it’s still very pretty. It’s

the perfect cut-and-come-again salad

crop, grown as an edging plant in a herb

garden (25cm) where it will stop the birds

flinging soil onto the paths, but the trick is

to snip only the leaves and let the fountain

of spherical pink flower heads cover

the plant in midsummer. Once it

has flowered you can either dead-head

it, or if you like shear it to the ground

(light, well drained) and it will instantly

regrow and even reflower. Sometimes

you can even shear it a third time for

autumnal freshness. For a bolder effect

there is the giant form (40cm) ‘Forescate’.

Like all alliums it is not evergreen, but still

it is a decent alternative to dwarf box

hedging in summer.

The best alliums for late-

summer flowers

A. ‘Millennium’

A leathery-leaved senescens type,

but it’s bolder and one that made

a big splash in garden centres

last summer. It holds its

lavender-pink globes high

at 40cm, well above the

leaves, with the stance

of a bulbous allium.

Give it a few years and

it will be grown every-

where. It’s partly that

flattened strappy foli-

age that makes these

alliums so appealing;

it’s an unusual effect

and a good contrast

among the general run of

garden foliage.

White-flowered Chinese chives

(A. tuberosum)

A taller, looser affair (40cm), upright if

a bit wobbly, with flatter rather than tubu-

lar leaves, but its value is that it flowers in

late summer and autumn at a season when

most other things are signing off. It’s also

called “garlic chives”, which tells you more

Question

time

Allium schoenoprasum

STEPHEN ANDERTON; ALAMY

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