I have a very soft spot for Salvia elegans, the pineapple sage... even here in SW France it is only marginally hardy, meaning, in it's native South American it should be evergreen but with us it is a tender-ish deciduous perennial and needs a deep mulch of manure and leaves to come through the winter... that said, I never lost a plant so far, and since it is very easy to strike and overwinter cuttings, which grow like the blazes once planted outside, it should be easy to keep one way or the other... I have at least of dozen big plants by now, all started from a tiny one.
ok, that was the intro, the facts are that pineapple sage has the lovely smell that the name claims, and blooms extravagantly in fiery red between the beginning of autumn and the first frosts, huge bushes of red spikes (even if you start in spring with tiny cuttings) and I always see it buzzing with bees and bumblebees. It's a favourite with the whole family here.
One time I had it with a large specimen of Mina lobata behind, an annual climber, and some Tagetes "Naughty Marietta" and the whole group was wonderfully luminous in october and buzzing with ecstatic bees.
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I have a very soft spot for Salvia elegans, the pineapple sage... even here in SW France it is only marginally hardy, meaning, in it's native South American it should be evergreen but with us it is a tender-ish deciduous perennial and needs a deep mulch of manure and leaves to come through the winter... that said, I never lost a plant so far, and since it is very easy to strike and overwinter cuttings, which grow like the blazes once planted outside, it should be easy to keep one way or the other... I have at least of dozen big plants by now, all started from a tiny one.
ok, that was the intro, the facts are that pineapple sage has the lovely smell that the name claims, and blooms extravagantly in fiery red between the beginning of autumn and the first frosts, huge bushes of red spikes (even if you start in spring with tiny cuttings) and I always see it buzzing with bees and bumblebees. It's a favourite with the whole family here.
One time I had it with a large specimen of Mina lobata behind, an annual climber, and some Tagetes "Naughty Marietta" and the whole group was wonderfully luminous in october and buzzing with ecstatic bees.