Planting alliums gives you the same punch in the late-spring garden as using onions in cooking — all the elements of the dish will be more pungent and appealing.

Flowering alliums are, indeed, part of the onion family. Often called ornamental onions, blooming alliums are grown for their striking flowers.

Alliums need to be planted in the next few months but will bloom later than other spring bulbs, giving you garden color in May, June and into July, depending on the variety. It's the shape of the flowers — globes, ovals and balls on tall stems — that stand out as accents among May perennials.

Brent Heath of Brent and Becky's Bulbs (www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com) uses sports-ball descriptions in his catalog to identify the scale of the flowers: giant, volleyball size; large, baseball or tennis ball; and small, golf ball to marble size.

Alliums require sunshine, as do many other spring-blooming bulbs. Plant 3 times the depth of the bulb in well-drained soil, because bad drainage rots the bulbs. Water thoroughly after planting. Then sprinkle a bulb fertilizer on top of the planting — anything with a moderate level of nitrogen, like a granular 9-6-6, will do fine. Packaged bulb food works well, and they grow easily.

Some alliums will send up leaves in the fall, but leaves often begin dying back before the flowers open.

May-blooming alliums that come back year after year include the well-known 'Purple Sensation,' 20-30 inches tall and topped by purple baseball-like blooms. Another reliable one, Allium atropurpureum, has dark florets composing a tennis-ball-sized flower. Allium christophii startles gardeners with an 8- to 9-inch ball that resembles fireworks; this one stays at 12 inches tall and is zingy in containers.

As summer advances, later allium come into their own. Plant these in November or December, but expect them in June and even July borders. A perennial and reliable oval-shaped purple is Drumstick allium (Allium sphaerocephalon), blooming at the same time as summer lilies. You're not limited to lavender or purple — consider the tiny Allium moly, 10 inches tall with long-lasting yellow flowers. It's been grown in gardens since the time of the ancient Greeks (reminding us that if you are planting an heirloom garden, alliums will fit right in).

Allium caeruleum blooms in clear blue; Allium roseum is pink. These three all have marble/golf-ball-sized flowers on shorter stems. One of the weirdest is 'Hair,' with frizzy green Albert Einstein locks.

Alliums dry well; if you allow them to stay in the garden after bloom color, they gradually will fade into chartreuse green, then into tan as the summer progresses.

If you wish to dry them for indoor use, pick them and set them in a vase or jar with about an inch of water. They will dry as the water evaporates. My favorite for drying is a spectacular beach-ball-sized winner, Allium schubertii. One dried in a vase on my desk measures 18 inches across. They're good winter partners with other dried flowers. I have found that Allium schubertii doesn't return as reliably as others in subsequent years, so I plant new bulbs each year.

Squirrels and deer leave these alone; that's another big plus for the onion family.

Garden expert Mary Robson, retired area horticulture agent for Washington State University/King County Cooperative Extension, shares gardening tips every Wednesday. Her e-mail is marysophia@earthlink.net.