Allium, Ornamental Onion 'Ozawa'

I've grown the cultivar 'Ozawa' for many years. It's a tough, easy plant, valuable for its rich purple flower color, long late season of ...Read Morebloom, and brilliant orange fall foliage color. It clumps up very quickly without being at all aggressive. I've never seen a self-sown seedling.

Though it's a bulbous plant, this species does not go dormant before late fall. The leaves stay healthy, slowly turning a luminous orange, up till Thanksgiving, or later if not hit by hard frost.

Division of the clumps is the easiest way to increase a planting. A single bulb forms a good tight clump in one season. Clumps can be divided any time of year the ground is workable.

This cultivar produces flower scapes about 9" tall in midsummer, but the buds don't begin to open till October. Flowers are colorful, long-lasting, and impervious to frost. When they finally dry, they don't bleach quickly. I've seen them contribute color to the garden as late as Christmas.

"Fuchsia" generally means "magenta", a color to which some people are averse. The flowers of 'Ozawa' are a bright clear red-purple, but they're decidedly not magenta.

Equally great for the rock garden and for the edge of a perennial/mixed border.