The best wood sages for your garden
If you’re looking for a high-value plant for your garden, look no further than Salvia nemorosa and S. x sylvestris. Also known as the wood sages.
Why are they so good?
They flower twice each year if you cut them back like this. Bees love them! And they’re tough as coffin nails.
Watch the video: and read on for more details
Wood sages are all different
Because wood sages make such great garden plants, it’s not surprising that they’ve been highly bred to produce lots of wonderful cultivars. To the eye, these cultivars are all obviously wood sages, but there’s a lot of variation in there too.
For example…
You get blue/purple flowered cultivars, and you get pink flowered ones. Some plants are very short, barely taller than 30cm. Others are quite monstrous, reaching almost a meter.
Selecting a suitable variety for your spot is the most important thing. I hope this video helps you to do that.
Please can you help me out?
If you’ve got a minute to help me out, that would be amazing! Id love to know:
- Have you got any wood sages in your garden?, Both yes and no answers are great!
- If yes, what made you choose them?
- If no, why not? Maybe you’d never heard of them. Maybe they weren’t available in your garden centre.
I’m trying to get a feel for the popularity of different plants so any information you can give would be very much appreciated.
Thanks, and happy growing!
Joe
Joe Vary Dip. Hort (Wisley), MCIHort, CMTGG
Gardener, educator, consultant, and planting designer. Learn with me 1-2-1, or in the My Gardening Mentor community.
This Post Has 4 Comments
Yes Joe I have wood sages at home. Pink ones and white. Always cut them back for a second flush. Great plants!
Hi Lesley,
I knew you love the Mexican Salvia so it doesn’t surprise me that you have a collection of wood sages too. You have excellent taste in plants 😀
The pink are my favourite too, but am really enjoying the blue ones at the Village Hall garden too.
Great to hear that you’re a practitioner of the summer chop.
Best wishes,
Joe
Thanks for this Joe, Very interesting. I do not have wood sage (to may knowledge) in either my few beds or in my 2 acre Meadow, or 2 acre Scrub field, something to look into. I imagine the right cultivar would be good at self seeding?.
Regarding butterflies, this July has been spectacular for numbers of certain species, including too many Cabbage Whites) after a the late May/June almost complete absence. I’m up to over 15 regular species throughout the season now which is good for a newly established -24 years former arable land) woodland and meadow area here in East Kent.
Hi there Martin,
Great to hear from you. Your site sounds amazing! Garden beds, meadow, scrubland, woodland; perfect 👌
It sounds like you’re re-wildling? I love that.
Regarding choosing the right cultivar for your garden/meadows/woodland. The Wood Sages (Salvia nemeorosa and S. x sylvestris) are generally used in garden beds. They’re tough, beautiful and perform very well. They may be able to be naturalised in wild areas of gardens in the UK, but I’ve never seen this. Only in naturalistic style borders which are perfect for wood sages.
However, the other parent of S. x sylvestris is S. pratensis (Meadow Clary, and this is British native (although rare). It grows in dry calcareous grassland, and I’m excited by the possibility of it being grown in managed meadows. In our garden, I’ve planted it in a border on the edge of our meadow in the hope that some of the seed will fall into the meadow and establish.
My experience is that all of these plants self seed very easily. Although they aren’t likely to come true, it’s rarely a problem if you’re relaxed about not having exclusively named cultivars.
Thanks for your observations about the butterflies. We’re the same with cabbage whites and have also are also seeing a great variety of other species; although I’m not great and identifying them (I’d like to learn). I haven’t counted the species this year but will start writing them down. Numbers are always a helpful metric.
Thanks for commenting Martin.
Joe