Sage

This South American tender perennial is an elegant alternative to the more familiar scarlet salvia, S. splendens, varieties usually seen in bedding schemes. The flower-spikes have all the vivacity of those popular plants, but they are longer and less cluttered with blooms, which gives the plants an airy grace and more of a shrub-like appearance. They are grown in just the same way, and may be discarded at the end of the season, but plants survive the winter under glass very readily, and if pruned after flowering will produce sideshoots in spring for cuttings. The Royal Horticultural Society has given it their prestigious Award of Garden Merit (AGM).