If you are looking for a long-blooming perennial that will survive neglect, drought, rabbits, and deer, salvias are your answer. To top it off, they are a really one of the best pollinator attracting plants that you can put in your garden. Bees, butterflies and hummingbirds all flock to them.
If you’re a new gardener and don’t really know where to start, or what plants to put in the garden or if you have a really tough spot in your garden where you have a really hard time getting things to grow, salvias are a wonderful perennial to try. Everyone can have success with this plant.
They need at least 6 hours of sunlight a day to bloom successfully and require well-drained soil. Just like anything, they will perform better with average watering, but will also survive in drought conditions.
There are over 900 varieties of salvias – some perennial, some annual – so I thought I’d list some of our favorites that we have at the nursery below to help you narrow down your search. These selections are all very winter hardy
for our region – most being rated as hardy in zones 3-8.
A tried and true variety producing violet-blue flowers on a nice compact plant reaching about 18”-24” high with a spread of 15-18”.
A tall upright variety, reaching heights of 24-30” with very dark, almost black stems which give it a very dramatic presence in the garden. The flowers are dark purple on very upright stems.
This salvia has one of the largest flower heads of any perennial salvia on the market and has a bushy, compact habit. It blooms for a very long time and reaches a height and width of about 1’.
Once your salvia plant stops blooming, prune off the spent blooms. This will encourage young, fresh growth to break from near the bottom and fresh buds will break out and keep blooming for many more weeks through the summer and sometimes into fall.
Great companion plants to salvias are Blanket Flowers, Black-Eyed Susans, ‘Elijah Blue’ Fescue, Echinacea and Sedums.
Salvias are some of the showiest plants for containers and mixed borders and I highly recommend them for any sunny border or container garden that needs some spectacular summer color.