We sell a good many unusual bulbs, and Nectaroscordum is the one that gets talked about. It is tall, taller than people expect, and in June it dangles its flowers from the top of a stem a metre high, a whole nodding head of them at once. Look closely and each little bell is cream, veined with green, stained maroon at the shoulder. Then the seed pods do the strangest thing and turn to point at the sky. Its other name, the one you will see on the label, is Allium siculum, the Sicilian honey garlic.
When Does It Flower
June is its month, running on into July, just as the last of the spring bulbs go over. Every stem holds a dozen or more bells on thread fine stalks, drooping together in a loose head, and their colouring is a quiet business of cream and green and maroon, brushed here and there with pink, that rewards a close look far more than a passing glance. What happens next is half the charm of the plant. The dead flowers lift themselves upright, pod by pod, into a green candelabra that dries slowly to the colour of straw and keeps its shape for weeks. Brush the leaves in passing and you get the garlic on your fingers that gives the family away.
Where Should You Plant It
Almost anywhere sunny that is not a bog. Nectaroscordum came to our gardens from Sicily and the south of France, and it has the constitution of a weed, hardy right through and untroubled by thin soil, so long as the winter wet drains away from its neck. It reaches well past a metre and never once asks for a stake. The one thing worth a little thought is where you put it, up among lower planting so that you look through the hanging bells rather than down onto them.
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How Do You Plant It
Plant the bulbs in autumn, ten to fifteen centimetres deep and fifteen to twenty apart, and then leave them to it. Nectaroscordum settles in quickly and seeds itself about with some enthusiasm, so if you would rather it stayed where you put it you can cut the heads off before the seed ripens, though those seed heads are half the reason to grow the plant at all. It is a fine thing for cutting both in flower and in seed, and the dried heads will stand in a vase right through the winter.
Why Grow It
For its character far more than its colour, which is rather the point of it. Nectaroscordum is an architect’s plant, all height and poise and clever detail, and it does two quite different jobs in a single season, first the dangling nectar rich bells that the bees adore and then the upstanding seed heads that follow them. It is a close cousin of the ornamental onions, an allium in all but name, and it belongs among them and among the other tall bulbs of early summer, where its curious flowers can be studied at leisure.
Plant These With Your Nectaroscordum
Nectaroscordum keeps good company with the other tall bulbs of early summer, the ones that carry a border on once the spring has gone over and thrive in the same open sun and quick draining soil. Plant it with any of these three and it will stand comfortably among them.
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