Not being very good at garden design, I’m always interested in learning about new and spectacular plant combinations to try in my own little “experiment-gone-wrong” that I call a garden.

Maybe the next great grouping will be just what’s needed to tie everything together. Either that, or maybe it will distract everyone from noticing the instances where the plants had a different idea than I did on just how things should turn out.

The Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center, now in Vermont instead of New York, has suggestions for using ornamental alliums in combination with other perennials to create some outstanding partners. Over the past 10 years the number of allium varieties has exploded. Distant cousins of garlic, alliums are sometimes called ornamental garlic or flowering onion, names that fall short in conveying the exuberant good looks of this sophisticated plant group.

Alliums thrive in well-drained, sandy, even rocky soil where they receive full or partial sun. Spaced widely, alliums will naturalize and multiply in compatible climate zones (most are hardy in USDA zones 5-8, others in zones 3-7.)

Following are some inspired allium and perennial combinations found in NYC and Chicago, each selected by Dutch master landscape artist and designer Piet Oudolf. He creates combinations that surprise and delight via their interplay of foliage, form and flower color, with height, texture, movement, bloom and after-bloom aspects taken into account.

Growing 2 feet tall, Allium “purple sensation,” with its formal spherical shape, sturdy stem and large reddish-purple baseball-sized flowers, provides contrast to soft, curved shapes and more subtle colors, or to complement other dramatic perennials. Team it with phlomis tuberose “Amazone” (Jerusalem sage) which grows to 5 feet tall with lavender flowers stacked on the stem like skewered olives.

“Purple sensation” also adds an upright spherical shape and whimsical impertinence to lower growing heuchera “caramel” (coral bells) and gillenia trifoliate (Bowman’s root). The coral bells’ low, curled leaves, golden in spring and more apricot as the season warms, make an excellent counterpoint.

The compact and bushy Bowman’s root makes an evolving color contribution — mahogany-colored stems in early season, white flowers summer through fall, followed by reddish foliage color in autumn.

Team “purple sensation” with geranium phaeum “springtime” (cranesbill geranium) for exciting color play and contrast of shape. The freeform structure and small maroon flower of the cranesbill, bred by Oudolf, “pulses with quiet energy” in combination with “purple sensation.”

Other pretty partners suggested for “purple sensation” include deschampsia cespitosa “goldstaub” (tufted hairgrass), a low-growing ornamental grass with narrow, pleated leaves and delicate white flowers; and gladiolus communis byzantinus (sword lily), a hardy summer-blooming bulb with sword-shaped foliage and in late spring and small, fragrant, orchid-like cerise flowers.

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