JESSIE ATTRI SAW HER first allium in 1994; within a year she had devoted her West Seattle garden to growing and selling them. I haven't fallen for them quite that hard, but last fall I did add another 50 or so to join those I'd planted in past years.

"Alliums are in the same family as garlic, chives and onions," explains Attri. "Most of the ornamentals are edible but they don't taste all that good."

Dinner will be the last thing on your mind when you see the large globes of bright purple rising to tower four or five feet in the air, like a flock of hovering spacecraft. "The big boys," as Attri calls these oversized drumstick alliums, bloom dependably each year, adding height and flamboyance to the May and June garden. Hummingbirds and bees flock to them, while deer and squirrels leave them alone. Cultural requirements are simple but essential: sun and good drainage.

Attri says that allium, hellebores and euphorbia are the three currently hot garden plants in England. Brits love them because they're showy, but not too showy; their size and shape are flashy, the colors a restrained palette of blue, white or purple.

I can't think of any other plant that creates such a spectacle in so little space. All you need worry about is finding the room to get those big bulbs into the ground, and in the spring they'll make their way between perennials, shrubs and ground covers to bloom above the fray, a most important virtue in an overcrowded garden.

Allium are not only show stoppers during bloom, but dry to starry buff-colored spheres that give texture and structure to the garden all summer long. Pick them when they finally collapse and add them to dried arrangements. I have a Japanese basket filled with the dried heads of Allium christophii, and they are as striking now as they were in the garden years ago.

A. christophii is the first allium I ever saw, and I couldn't believe my eyes. One early June I turned a corner in a friend's garden to see a bed of marbled arum leaves, dotted with metallic lavender flower heads 10 inches across. Supported by foot-high stalks and packed with up to 80 star-shaped florets, they looked like Christmas-tree ornaments floating amid the rest of the plantings.

Last fall I planted an allium new to me, A. schubertii, which has the look of a fountain spraying pale pinky-purple flowers. It is exceptionally striking when dried, with flowerets extending out in unequal lengths, increasing the starry effect.

My favorite of the tall alliums is A. giganteum, which grows nearly 5 feet high, topped with cantaloupe-size blooms in rich purple-violet. I grow it to mingle with white calla lilies and with lavender for a double hit of purple. The floppy, strap-like leaves appear in March, withering away before June flowering.

I succumbed to the lure of the too-expensive A. `Globemaster', another purple with even larger flower heads than A. giganteum. The flowers were impressive, but after bloom they collapsed, too heavy for the stems to support. The structural presence alliums lend to the summer garden is lost, so `Globemaster' is off my list.

Attri points out that the tallest allium is `Mount Everest,' a white that comes up to her chin. She admires A. elatum, describing it as pink and buzz-cut fuzzy. For earlier bloom, she recommends A. zebdanense with fragrant flowers in snowy white.

Next weekend you can see 75 different kinds of allium in bloom when Attri holds an open house at her nursery, A Thousand Alliums (May 15-17, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. each day, 915 S.W. Willow, Seattle. 206-935-7506)

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com

In Bloom: In early May, fluffy vivid blue flowers cover the evergreen wild lilac (Ceanothus). Both shrub and groundcover varieties need full sun and a hillside site for good drainage. The color range of pale sky blue to vivid indigo is welcome in the spring garden, and the glossy green foliage is handsome year-round.