The Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden on 3rd May 2024

The Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim, Norway contains over 100 Allium species and over 400 different accessions including a collection of old Norwegian onions which I collected across the country. You can safely eat all Alliums and most species have in the past been wild foraged. A few do have an unpleasant taste, but most are good to eat including some of the best known ornamental onions, some of the best edimentals (combined food and beauty) and edi-ento-mentals: also a very popular genus for pollinators like bumble bees and wasps. We don't harvest from the garden, but it is at peak harvesting season now in early May. Members of KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) in Norway can order most of the Alliums grown in the garden each autumn (see kvann.no) Some of the Alliums mentioned: Allium cernuum (nodding onion; Chicago onion; prærieløk) Allium x proliferum (walking onion; Egyptian onion; luftløk) Allium tricoccum (ramps) Allium nutans (and hybrids with this species) Allium victorialis (now split into 5 species across its large range) Allium hymenorhizum Allium cernuum (dwarf variety) Allium fistulosum (Welsh onion; pipeløk) Allium schoenoprsum (chives; gressløk) Allium pskemense Allium pskemense x fistulosum "Wietse's onion" Allium stipitatum (Persian shallots) Allium carolinianum Allium stenodon (mini onion from China) Allium fistulosum (rooftop onion; takløk from the Gudbrandsdalen valley) Allium schoenoprasum "Nina Bakken" (chives; gressløk from Dovre) Allium douglasii (Douglas' onion; Douglasløk) Allium humile (from China; the first to flower every year) Allium karataviense Allium ochotense (previously Asiatic victorialis)