FLIMBY: In praise of a pollinator magnet
This is another installment in our weekly Flowers in My Back Yard series devoted to blooming plants.
For a few years, I had quite a salvia buying habit. First the colors of the flowers drew me in, bright pink or red, blue violet or lavender, and even peach against the soft green leaves.
Then the ease of caring for these small perennials kept me searching them out at plant sales and nurseries. Almost a “plant it and forget it” shrub, the salvia thrived in the garden once established.
And the pollinators absolutely loved the bright tubular flowers — even more reason to choose these lovely, climate-tolerant shrubs.
But it wasn’t until I learned how to prune them that my salvia plants came into their own.
For this blog post, when I refer to salvia I specifically mean Salvia greggii, known commonly as autumn sage, and Salvia microphylla, sometimes called baby sage. The two, also grouped as “small-leaf salvias,” are almost identical when it comes to flowers, but their growth habits are slightly different, microphylla being slightly larger, with somewhat flexible branches and serrated leaves, while greggii has smaller leaves with smooth margins and its branches are more brittle. Full size, they range from 2 to 4 feet tall and wide, with a mounding habit.
They are not California natives, but are from the Southwest, primarily Texas and Mexico. There also is a naturally occurring hybrid of these two varieties, Salvia x jamensis. And cultivars abound.
All of these salvias are on the updated UC Davis Arboretum All-Star list, which indicates how valuable they are in our landscapes. To be an Arboretum All Star, a plant must offer strong habitat value (providing food, shelter, or nesting for wildlife and pollinators) or require low to very low irrigation, making them ideal for a future of more extreme weather. The Arboretum sales are where I first developed my attraction to salvias.
(Side note: The next Arboretum plant sale is Saturday, April 11. Click here for information and a link to the most recent plant inventory.)
Rub the leaves of one of these sages to release its fresh, almost minty fragrance — yes, it’s part of the mint family (Lamiaceae). Salvia, incidentally, is the largest genus in that family.
Have I mentioned that hummingbirds adore the flowers? Bees, too. The big carpenter bees bend the branches but manage to hang on when they visit the plants.
So, how to care for these gorgeous plants? They like 6 to 8 hours of full sun and do best with a little shade on the hottest afternoons. They require only low water once established; good drainage is important. They generally are pest- and disease-free.
Deadheading generally isn’t needed, but the shrubs can be trimmed throughout the blooming season to keep them looking tidy. Cut them back significantly in winter to encourage new growth, keep the size under control (especially with the popular ‘Hot Lips’ cultivar) and to remove any woody growth that lacks leaves.
Pruning is an important step that’s easy to forget about these otherwise hands-off perennials. Here’s a Sacramento County master gardener YouTube video on summer and winter pruning of woody sages (salvias).
I now have about as many small-leaf salvias as my garden can hold comfortably but that doesn’t stop me from checking out the selection at any nursery or plant sale. There might be one I just have to have.
