Pinball Wizard Allium Bulbs Planted - October 2021

Most every Fall, I've planted bulbs of some variety.  The last few seasons, it has been tulip bulbs in the front and back beds.  But, I've also planted Alliums over the years including these Purple Sensation bulbs in 2017 and 2018.  This year, I'm going to be digging in a little bit of both - including some Tulips that Nat bought at Costco and some Alliums that both she bought (at Costco) and some others that I ordered online.  I'll post about the tulips in the coming days, but first up are these Pinball Wizard Allium bulbs that came home from Costco.  

This is a pack of five - and because I bought other types online, we stopped with just these five, despite knowing that you're *supposed* to plant bulbs in big masses.  The package (below) shows a little child's head next to some MASSIVE purple Allium flower heads. 

The listing at Longfield Gardens shows them as a pack of two, but, they're the *full* bulbs, while the ones at Costco come as a pack of five, but are split bulbs.  I'm thinking there is about two (or maybe 1.75) full bulbs that have been broken up.  So, my Allium are going to be smaller than the larger ones - at least out of the gate.  Here's how Longfield Gardens describes them:

This allium is an excellent choice for perennial gardens and containers. The big, 6 to 8” diameter globes are almost as large as Globemaster, but the stems are shorter and stockier. Pinball Wizard’s florets are also slightly larger and the florets have a beautiful silvery sheen. Seedheads look attractive long after the flowers fade.

Shorter, stockier stems is great.  Some of my other Alliums flop over.  Others...have been dug and gobbled up by chipmunks and squirrels.  But, I keep wanting these big ball Alliums to work like our lower, clumping ones like Summer Beauty.

With the bed that I created last Fall 'in between two driveways' being a sparse bed, I thought these would go well there.  There's currently a mix of grasses (Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses and some Hokone All Gold Grasses), three Allium Serendipity and some Creeping Jenny that I transplanted from a container last Fall.   I tucked these five Pinball Wizard Allium bulbs in amongst the Hakone All Gold grasses.  See below for their approximate locations in the purple circles:

# 3 on my 2021 to-do list was to continue to 'work the in between two driveways' area.  Between adding a fresh layer of mulch, finishing up the walkway and (more recently) adding the small bed down by the sidewalk with some newly (trans)planted sedum and a grass, I had pretty much checked this one off my list.  But, now with these Alliums, I feel pretty good about the bed.  Still more work to be done, but little by little this area is improving.