Ornamental Onion
Allium
An award-winning ornamental onion that forms a tidy clump of glossy leaves topped with rosy purple globes in mid to late summer, a magnet for bees and butterflies. Deer and rabbits pass it by, put off by the oniony scent. It's easy in sun and soil of any fertility, as long as the ground never stays soggy.
- Mature size
- 1.5 × 1 ft
- 0.5 × 0.3 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 4a–8b
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part sun
- Water
- Medium
- Blooms
- Jul–Aug
Ornamental Onion at its mature size
A mature Ornamental Onion grows 15 to 20 inches tall and 10 to 15 inches wide.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: Proven Winners.
Through the year
What Ornamental Onion looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Below ground · Nov–Mar
Dies back to the ground.
In leaf · Apr–Jun
Tidy clump of glossy bright green strap-like leaves, no flower stalks yet.
In flower · Jul–Aug
Round rose-purple flower balls on bare stalks above the leaves.
Fall · Sep–Oct
Flower balls dried to tan seed globes, leaves turning golden-yellow and tan.
Growing Ornamental Onion
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Midwest, the Plains and Mountain West, and the Pacific Northwest.
- Good for
- Deer resistant and pollinators
- Leaves
- Dies back in winter
- Native to
- Europe and Asia
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Ornamental Onion, that’s about 1 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Ornamental Onion in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.