It's possible they could have rotted,Gerardine..not sure if anything would have eaten them..I had some in pot once,and they did the same,but the ones in a border were fine..sorry you seem to have lost them,they should be coming into flower now..

perhaps they did,there have been a few slugs in the garden,i am so disappointed but theres always next year

I have had a few that the stalk has rotted with the wet weather we had a few weeks past. I looked at the bulbs and theskin was rotting but the bulbs itself was turgid. I removed the skin and placed back with some sand and grit and loosened the soil to hope that they come back next year. They are normally pretty safe bulbs. When did you plant them? There are later flowering ones and if only planted in spring then they will be later to leaf and flower as well.

I planted 24 last autumn Geraldine and they have all come through,(i live in Newcastle )They are lovely, dont give up, maybe they were a bit soft or not viable bulbs,Try again this year.. i got mine from Wilkinsons by the way..

Which variety of Allium were they, Geraldine?

Ditto Gerardine...being a poppy lover too i had alliums coming up in one spot of my border for the last 3 years and i too had a papaver start to come up right in the middle last year so i left it alone and this year its smothered where my alliums usually come up so as a result ive only got 4 flowering alliums this year BUT on the other hand ive got another lovely flowering papaver this year (one of many)..... but alliums do need lots of drainage & sunlight in the early months of a year unfortunantly papavers tend to outgrow most other plants....so i shall have to do some re designing later this year i guess. ;)

im not sure the name of them but they were big purple ones and came up great last year alongside my poppies i would like to dig these poppies up and put them somewhere else but the roots are very deep and i never seem to get them all up and they always come back

Yes, poppies can be very deep rooted, well, the larger ones anyway. In my experience, you have to dig down at least a spade and half's depth into the soil to get all root out, sometimes 2 spades deep. And I mean full sized garden spade, not a border one...