My Old Neighbors

This Allium ‘Millenium’ will always remind me of our next-door neighbors when I was a kid.  Not because they grew this particular variety of Allium—it was introduced in 1990, long after I’d left home—but because their son called me up one day and asked if I wanted a few clumps of it.

He had planted it in a container at his mom’s retirement apartment, and when he switched over the planting from summer to fall, as one does, he decided the ornamental allium might be nice for someone to plant out in a garden.

Enter me, who has a garden.

He gave me two big clumps of these alliums. I soaked them a bit, split them into separate bulbs, and planted the bulbs out along the edge of several flower beds.

They took off!

Now when I see these alliums in flower all over my garden, as a border edging, I think of our good neighbors who lived next door to my family for over 40 years.

Good neighbors.

And a good allium. Allium ‘Millenium’ gets about a foot tall, forms a clump, and is not a big self-sower, though most sellers advise cutting off seed heads in the fall because some seeds will form. (Yes, that is the correct spelling of the variety name ‘Millenium’.)

Oh, and it was good enough to be named the 2018 Perennial Plant of the Year by the Perennial Plant Association.

This spring, I shared some bulbs with two of my sisters and told them of its origins. Now they can think of our good neighbors when these bloom in their gardens. And when a flower can bring back good memories of good people, and also look pretty, that’s a reason to have it in your garden.

I think I’ll make sure my other sister gets some later this fall for her garden.

Add to that the previous offerings of cucumbers, peppers, more green beans, and cabbage and I’d echo what I heard one of my aunts once say, “We eat so good when we eat out of the garden.”

I like that thought and think of it with every mouthful of food from my own garden!