I have spent the past two years trying to establish a modest but charming hedge of rosemary, not the waist-high, architectural walls of clipped rosemary that I once saw in the south of France, but a row of small, billowing evergreen herbs that you find in Washington.
I picked rosemary because the space was long and narrow — 12 inches wide, 20 feet long — and had to sustain a plant that deer wouldn’t eat. When the winter before last became a repeat of the one before — that is, frigid — I knew the rosemary wouldn’t make it. This past winter wasn’t so bad, and I thought the hedge I had stubbornly replanted a year ago would be fine. It wasn’t, and it became clear in early March that most of the dozen rosemaries wouldn’t be coming back. I attribute this second demise to two factors: December, you will recall, was absurdly mild, and I suspect they didn’t ready themselves for winter before it turned frigid. Second, I grew them so aggressively that I pushed growth that was too “soft” and cold-tender.
The transplants went in about four inches high but ended the year three times as tall and four times as wide. I grew them in a mix of sand, gravel, limestone and compost and, knowing they weren’t in heavy clay, kept them well watered. They bit the hand that fed them.
My instinct was to try again until a friend said, in essence, “Ditch the rosemary; put in some Mexican bush sage.” The scales fell from my eyes. This was a perfect replacement.
Ornamental salvias are related to the common sage of the herb garden but vary widely in their habit, appearance and ornament. They cleave into two basic forms: Hardy perennial salvias bloom in May, as two-foot clumps with dazzling blue flower spikes. They ape lavenders (if you squint) in advance of lavender season and provide some of the strongest shades of violet-blue and indigo in the garden.
They perform well in the Mid-Atlantic, though the gathering heat of June renders them tired and spent by the dog days. Years ago, everyone was planting the dark German cultivar May Night (Mainacht), but a variety named Caradonna might be the one to grow. I’m told that the violet flowers, now in bud, will put on a show for a month and may re-bloom later in the summer.
The tender ones excel as long-blooming garden plants that thrive in the heat and flower from high summer into the fall. They add vitality to the garden when other flowers are flagging, which is to say when the garden needs such ornament the most. The blooms are also magnets for hummingbirds and insect pollinators.
The Salvia guaranitica is three feet tall with blue flowers, and one variety, Black and Blue, plays off the fact that the socket in which the bloom fits, the calyx, is deep purple. It is this conspicuous flower structure that makes salvias so special, beyond their late-season gift. Take note: Although these salvias do their thing from midsummer on, May is the month to acquire and plant them.
Many of them have a dainty quality to them; the red blooms of the autumn sage (Salvia gregii) hover above the gray-green foliage, for example. I like the deep rich purple-reds of a variety named Van Houttei, flowering away until the first frost. A gardening friend likes the Salvia discolor, a pretty, gray-green salvia not to be confused with Salvia divinorum, which reputedly has pyschoactive effects as a drug. You may find the world weird and magical enough without such stimulation. I am trying to lay my hands on a salvia hybrid named Wendy's Wish, which my chums rave about for its bushy habit and continuous magenta blossoms.
But it is the Mexican bush sage that has heft and presence, growing to five feet or more and smothering itself in white flowers emerging from violet-purple calyces. In a variety named Midnight, the whole inflorescence is a dark, velvety purple. It might be prudent to stake it discreetly at planting time and recognize that the blooms get to 12 inches long and may wander sideways a bit by September.
Worried that my narrow border would be overwhelmed by the grown-up version, I bought a dwarf variety named Santa Barbara, which grows to about half the height of the species and has lavender-purple flowers. Purple Dwarf is another compact variety.
Not all of my rosemary plants perished; some survived, if beaten back. I will see whether they recover. A variety named Arp, known to be particularly hardy, survived, as did Gorizia and Herb Cottage. These did not: Tuscan Blue, Golden Rain, Salem and Severn Sea. Pointing out the distinction isn’t necessarily a guide to growing rosemaries: No two microclimates are the same, and no two winters are, either.
Short of another foot of rain next month, as we had last June, the Mexican bush sage is about as foolproof as you can get in the roller-coaster climate of the Mid-Atlantic. Some fusspots may lay a thick protective mulch over the crowns come November, but most of us will be content to sacrifice these salvias to the next winter. Suddenly, the gardener has one less plant to worry about. Rosemary may be for remembrance, but I’ve decided to forget about it for a while.
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