Super Salvias!

Drought-tolerant, long-flowering and mostly pest-resistant, salvias are invaluable summer plants, says Graham Clarke, as he reveals his favourite varieties

- Graham Clarke

FOLLOWING this summer’s hottest days – and we are talking heat of 40° and more – my sunny flower beds looked exhausted. Pelargoniums, petunias and verbena were all flagging. However, the salvias continued to stand tall, proud and as fresh as a pin. In one bed I had six ‘dot’ plants of Salvia Mystic Spires, and they remained fabulous right up until I had to remove them to make way for the winter and spring bedding.

This is just one example of why, if I could, I’d fill my garden with salvias. They have such variety, and they offer so many benefits. Apart from good heat and drought tolerance, they also perform wonderfully well in ‘normal’ British summers. They flower over a long period, they are low maintenance, they offer excellent wildlife value and, as if all this were not enough, they are resistant to many of the usual pests that munch their way through our summer plants. In short, they are invaluable.

Salvias for summer bedding

Take summer bedding salvias, for example. For more than a century we’ve had bright spikes of intense scarlet, available via Salvia splendens and its cultivars. In the 1990s, salvia breeding intensified, and many varieties today have salmon-pink, lilac, lavender, purple, white and dark-red shades. There are even bicoloured forms, with bracts of different shades.

Where to plant salvias