Tulbaghia violacea

Tulbaghia violacea, the plant gardeners know as society garlic, is a clump-forming perennial from the summer-dry grasslands of southern Africa, ranging from the Little Karoo through the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal. The genus honors Ryk Tulbagh, the eighteenth-century Dutch governor of the Cape of Good Hope, while the species name violacea simply means violet, for the color of the flowers. The common name is a small joke: the leaves carry a clear garlic scent, but a gentler, more sociable one than true garlic, said to be polite enough for company.

From a mat of fleshy rhizomes rise slender, blue-green, strap-like leaves that release that unmistakable garlic breath when bruised or brushed. In South Africa the Zulu people have long eaten the leaves and flowers as a leaf vegetable and a seasoning, chopped over meat and potatoes much as chives or garlic greens would be, and the plant remains a fixture of herb gardens for both the kitchen and the medicine chest. Both the leaves and the starry flowers are edible, lending a mild garlic note and a spark of color to salads and summer plates.

From late spring through the heat of summer and into autumn, wiry stems lift airy umbels of small, tubular, lavender-purple flowers a foot or two above the foliage, swaying at the least breeze and drawing bees and butterflies. Society garlic makes an easy, long-blooming edging along a path or drive, a soft filler at the front of a sunny border, or a tidy sweep in a gravel or Mediterranean-style planting, and the same garlic compounds that flavor the kitchen also keep deer, rabbits, and many pests at a respectful distance.

Give the plant full sun and sharp, well-drained soil, and society garlic asks for very little, thriving on heat and drought once settled and colonizing gently into a generous clump over the years. Across the warm South the foliage stays evergreen, while at the cold edge of the range a hard freeze cuts the leaves back to rhizomes that return in spring, so a winter mulch or a lifted clump carries the plant through. For sheer, unfussy endurance, few flowering perennials give back so long a season for so little asked.