Plant combinations to love - Alchemilla mollis and Allium Christophii

I have to admit to pinching this plant combination from Sarah Raven.

the wonderful photography in her magazines and bold and brilliant book, persuaded me that sulphur yellow may be the colour i'm most asked to avoid in planting displays, but that it can look fantastic.

This photo was taken in a garden i've only been developing for under 2 years. The Alchemilla was propagated from seedlings last year, the Allium planted the Autumn before.

Alchemilla mollis is one of the cottage garden perennials that is scorned for being slightly common. It is however, easy to get hold of. It self seeds itself, so is cheap to propagate, and looks wonderful with water on the leaves (and lets face it, with the amount of rain this year, we need plants that look good in the rain). The floaty flower edge a summer border beautifully, and if dead headed when its flowers start to fade, will give a second flush of shimmering yellow at the end of the summer.

Allium Christophii is one of the easier (and cheaper at around 70-80p each) Allium bulbs to get hold of. Although it likes to be planted fairly deeply, after that, it is very little trouble, flowering again and again. The heads are larger than Purple sensation and later, so I often plant them at different places in the same border to get succesion of the Onion flowers, but Christophii is one of the longest to last as a dried flower head, and lasted for almost a year as a dried flower arrangement in my hall.

This year i'm also trying a variation of this combination with Obsidian Heuchera for year round colour, and daffodils for early colour and Nerines for late flowers. - I' ll let you know if it's an improvement on an already excellent combination.

Comments

[Jacqui_Hurst]

Looking forward to seeing your pictures of Nerines later in the year.