{"id":139,"date":"2009-03-09T10:30:36","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T18:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=139"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:00","slug":"red-salvia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/red-salvia\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Salvia"},"content":{"rendered":"

RED SALVIA
\n<\/font><\/font><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have never had annual red salvia or Salvia splendens in any of my gardens, but now I find myself thinking about it.\u00a0 My father grew it every year in a long bed in front of our back porch.\u00a0 I don’t remember seeing it happen, but I am pretty sure that he bought the plants in flats at some nursery, probably in Rochester, NY, a fast thirty mile trip in his sporty Pontiac LeMans convertible.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The red salvia went in as soon as the scores of small early tulips, probably Gregii types, faded in the late spring.\u00a0 The excitement generated by the scarlet, many-flowered spikes made a small part of my father’s gardening life easy.\u00a0 Once the plants were installed, the flowers bloomed through the entire growing season.\u00a0 I don’t think they were replaced with mums in the fall–they just went on and on, as red and gaudy as the day they first bloomed.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My parents loved bold reds, like the “Fire and Ice”\u009d lipstick my mother always wore.\u00a0 A classic Revlon shade, introduced in the early 1950’s, it was the color of mid-century American confidence.\u00a0 Red salvia reminds me of that.\u00a0 I don’t think those salvia ever came indoors as cut flowers–that distinction was reserved for roses, peonies, lilacs and iris.\u00a0 They lived their lives outdoors, making a big noise in a narrow bed. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Red salvia has been out of fashion in the last fifteen years or so, replaced by its many culinary and decorative relations.\u00a0 “Many”\u009d is probably an understatement.\u00a0 There are about nine hundred salvia species native to locations all over the world.\u00a0 Probably the best known is culinary sage or Salvia officinalis, an herb garden stalwart that Americans often use in poultry stuffing.\u00a0 Good cooks know that it can also flavor a host of other foods.\u00a0 Pineapple sage, or Salvia elegans, has a fruity sage taste, plus red flowers.\u00a0 It has been a la mode for the past several years.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Since the dawn of the most recent perennial plant craze about twenty years ago, the number of ornamental sages on the market has grown exponentially.\u00a0 One of my favorite perennial catalogs lists some twenty-two species and varieties, many of them in the fashionable blue and blue-purple color ranges.\u00a0 The good thing about all of those salvias is that they are long blooming, beautiful and relatively unattractive to most varmints, including rabbits and deer. \u00a0While repelling the undesirables, sages attract the more attractive and popular garden visitors including hummingbirds and butterflies.<\/font><\/p>\n

Red salvia has some of the same qualities.\u00a0 Its leaves, while not useful in cooking, are aromatic and therefore less alluring to animal pests.\u00a0 The bright flowers, with their characteristic tubular shapes, are stunning. \u00a0So why is red salvia currently flying so far below the fashion radar?\u00a0 \u00a0There are several possible reasons.\u00a0 First of all, it has been treated as an annual in most parts of the United States and annuals are only now coming back into vogue.\u00a0 For a certain period of time during the perennial surge, bright colors gave way to muted pastel tones in many gardens. Just as my mother’s “Fire and Ice”\u009d gave way, in some in come circles, to earthier tones, for a time the brilliant scarlet of Salvia splendens seemed dated next to softer hued salvias like Salvia nemorosa ‘Rose Queen’.\u00a0 \u00a0Baby Boom gardeners may have also rebelled–either consciously or unconsciously–against their parents’ red salvia by refusing to give it pride of place in their own beds, borders, pots and window boxes.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But in gardening, as in all things, it is good to remember the past.\u00a0 Red salvia has been a part of American gardens since the early 1820’s, having arrived here from its native southern Brazil.\u00a0\u00a0 Later on in the nineteenth century, when elaborate bedding schemes came into fashion, it was much prized as a reliable source of color and varieties with names like ‘Bonfire’ were available from major seed vendors. \u00a0The plants remained popular through two world wars and the Depression, before starting to fade somewhere around 1980.\u00a0 Now, when times are hard and we all need a bit more brightness in our lives, they are probably due for a renaissance.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I can’t imagine a day when I will wear “Fire and Ice”\u009d on my lips, but I can imagine a place for red salvia in my garden.\u00a0 I have often thought of a hot-colored bed, or at least a couple of big pots of fiery scarlet, yellow and orange annuals on my back porch.\u00a0 Red salvia would fit right in, reaffirming the idea that if you choose the right pathway, sometimes you can go home again.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Check with your local garden center this spring and you might find Salvia splendens.\u00a0 The plants are not hard to grow and if you want to start your own from seed, order from W. Atlee Burpee and Co., 300 Park Avenue, Warminster, PA, 18974, (800) 333-5808, <\/font><\/font>www.burpee.com<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Free catalog.\u00a0 Seeds are also available from Thompson & Morgan, 220 Faraday Avenue, Jackson, NJ 08527, (800) 274-7333, <\/font>www.tmseeds.com<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Free catalog. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RED SALVIA \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have never had annual red salvia or Salvia splendens in any of my gardens, but now I find myself thinking about it.\u00a0 My father grew it every year in a long bed in front of our back porch.\u00a0 I don’t remember seeing it happen, but I am pretty sure that he … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1645,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/1645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}