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Allium ursinum 'Golden Fleece'



21st April 2016


I know woodlands where the Wild Garlic covers the ground in a dense and pungent duvet of foliage in spring and bubbles with a white froth of flowers in April. There is a pleasure in them, but I don't want it in the garden.
There is a diabolical choice to be made unfortunately. I am very fond of yellow leaved plants. Partly it is pig-headedness I think. I hear so many people say they don't like them, which is fine, but they always go on to say it is because the plants are intrinsically awful and flawed and it rubs me up the wrong way.
So, the diabolical choice. Joe Sharman found a remarkable yellow leaved form of the Wild Garlic in Scotland. Plant it or not?
I planted it. I knew it came true from seed so it has the potential to form a shimmering golden carpet under the trees. Do I want that. I don't know. At present I have a single plant and I take out any seedlings that appear but one day it will escape. Perhaps that is the time to decide that I really want it after all!

17th April 2019


So far I have found germinated seedlings outside its container (it is contained) but they don't seem to persist into a second year. Perhaps that is just foolish optimism and they are simply waiting below ground until there is enough of them to overwhelm me.