Salvia Patens

Salvias have become very popular over recent years, but Salvia patens, the Gentian sage, has been used in British gardens for the past two centuries. The great Victorian gardener William Robinson wrote in his book, The English Flower Garden, that ‘It is one of the best plants in cultivation, the intense blue of its flowers making it a charming object. Though tender in most gardens, the tuberous roots are easily wintered in a frost-proof place’.

Over the past few years we have been able to overwinter this plant in the Mediterranean climate garden in the Botanical Gardens, and it is flourishing. The original plants were grown from seed by the gardeners working in the Gardens. It comes into flower mid-summer and continues until the autumn, although there is seldom more than a few blooms flowering at one time. The intensity of the colour blue is breathtaking, not seen in many plants, and the flowers are the largest of any salvia.

This plant is in the sage family, which has medicinal values, originally discovered in central Mexico where they grow on grassy banks and clearings around the woods. Antonio Cavanilles, a Spanish botanist, first described it, together with many other plants he found in the late eighteenth century.