![]() ![]() In mixed beds, there is no better natural transition green from the silvers of artemisia, white sage and lavender to the darker greens of yarrow, Jupiter’s beard and rosemary. The leaf color is a boon for native gardens, which often need plants to connect the gray, blue and olive greens of the native leaf palette back to the brighter greens of woodland natives, as well as standard-issue imports such as box hedges and lawn. Leaves vary from bright medium green to olive. Starting with the wood and foliage, young branches can be reddish, but with age become gray. The color range found within the Sal via greggii species is, perhaps, the plant’s greatest gift to gardeners. “To me, it is the smell of the West,” he says. Dave Fross, one of the founders of Native Sons Wholesale Nursery in Arroyo Grande, Calif., was so taken with it, he collected seeds in West Texas almost 20 years ago. It evolved to protect the plant from heat and deter deer, but it is irresistible to humans, somewhere between the scent of pines, mint and chaparral after the rain. Rabbits are said to eat young nursery seedlings, so it’s a good idea to protect them until they get some size, after which they will become unpalatable, thanks to their intense aromatics.Īs is true of many salvias, the scent isn’t in the flower, but in oils of the stem and leaf. When you deadhead, expect to be dive-bombed and scolded by a bird as incredulous as you would be if a waiter attempted to whisk away an unfinished bottle of Hermitage La Chapelle ’61. Deer avoid it, but butterflies and bees appreciate it, and there is no better hummingbird plant: They land on it fast and protect it aggressively. McBride says that tolerance might have evolved outside the plant’s normal desert range, perhaps in hill country, where the normally sand-loving autumn sage adapted to what he calls “black clay,” or very fine decomposed limestone.įor Southern Californians who want their gardens to support wildlife displaced by urban sprawl, autumn sage has an almost perfect profile. It accepts clay and withstands at least moderate watering with rare equanimity for desert natives. When it comes to Los Angeles home gardens, it’s often less finicky than many California natives. It has all the wildlife benefits they do, and no special needs. Given a similar range of climates in Southern California, cultivated autumn sage grows well here and blends in beautifully with our native sages, particularly Salvia apiana. According to Mike McBride, president of the Texas Native Plant Society, its wild habitat is in the Big Bend region of the Chihuahuan Desert, but it also occurs in southwestern Texas hill country and northwestern Texas brush country. Originally it was native to Texas, Arizona and Mexico. It fits every criterion a plant must have for inclusion in my garden: drought tolerance, sturdiness, beauty, food value (for me or birds or both), scent, and did I say beauty? Few plants open up the world of flower gardening, draw you into the garden and keep you there like Salvia greggii. ![]() If it ever came down to the impossible choice of naming a favorite plant, this might well be the one that would slip from my lips: autumn sage, or its botanical name, Salvia greggii, pronounced greg-ee-I, named for 19th century Western plant collector Josiah Gregg. ![]() There can be no pretense here of objectivity. Of all the plants that do it, autumn sage does it with a heart-stopping mix of ruggedness and grace. As days shorten, many native plants, dormant during the inferno of summer, begin to bloom again to set seed before winter rains. It is one of the flukes of Western gardening that fall is not a prelude to dormancy, but a second spring. ![]()
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