So far I've been blessed not to have deer bother my lilies. I have a lot of trouble with roses, though. Most fool-proof protection is a circle of welded wire fencing around the plant, or around a whole bed of plants. Another thing I'm trying this year is cut canes from my bamboo and place 3 6' tops with leaves and side branches around the plant to be protected, then running wire around and around going up 6" per ring to encase the plant in bamboo and wire. It seems to be working well so far and doesn't cost a lot like wire fencing. Of course if you have a city garden maybe this would be too unsightly for you, but I have a country garden. Another cheap deer repellant is to blend an egg and some cayenne pepper and a little detergent in water and sprinkle it around on plants. It would have to be reapplied after rain.

That reminds me, cornflower (Centaurea montana) and chives (Allium schoenoprasum) bloom at the same time in my garden as my Purple Sensation alliums. I think orange Iceland poppies would look very pretty too, but would they leave a hole? I've never tried poppies, or larkspur or nigella, which are annuals here. But I'm finding that leaving space for some annuals is a good idea, as space in the perennial gardens fills up. The annuals keep the blooms coming. I had some pansies overwinter, they looked good with the alliums too. I think I made a mistake moving all these to another bed.*sheepish grin*

I usually use annuals like petunias or 30-36 inch snapdragons toward the garden bed edges. I try to position spring bulbs in sections that are viewable when blooming, but covered by taller perennials later in the spring/summer. I plant peonies in the corners and then cut back the greens on the peonies to nicely shape the bushes. The bushes are still pretty and stay green all season, and they cover up the dying bulbs. I try to keep the outside of the bed open to put annuals, thereby covering up the dying foliage of the spring bulbs. I also interplant allium (I call them the purple pom-pom flowers). They bloom later than the early spring bulbs and cover up the drying foliage nicely. Along the sunny edge of the bed I plant iris since they need to have the sun shining on the rhizomes to bloom. Good idea to take care of it while you can still see the dying foliage - on several occasions I have been surprised by a tulip or daffodil growing out of the middle of my perennials! :)

I have drumstick alliums all over the place, mostly bought on impulse at places like Christmas Tree Shops. The only problem I've had with them is that one year I've got a nice clump of blooming plants and the next year it looks like grass - lots more leaves, in an ever-widening patch, and not quite so many flowers. I'm not sure if they're self-sowing or dividing, and I keep meaning to look up what DiSabato-Aust has to say about them (or maybe I already checked The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, and mum's the word on Alliums - that seems likely...) Maybe this is a zone difference, since we're in 7 here; or maybe it's a drainage issue? My garden's fairly sandy, so anything that likes well-drained loam is mostly happy in most areas of my garden. I haven't had too much luck with the big globe-like alliums, but I do have a few that have returned for several years - no idea where they came from, what variety they are, or when I planted them; they're in an inconspicuous spot in what used to be a vegetable garden. They certainly haven't spread or increased the way the drumsticks have! I do love to interplant alliums with hellebores, since swaths of hellebore foliage looks kind of boring in the summers.