The blue wonder

Sage - Salvia nemorosa Ostfriesland

The decorative sage is a real, wonderfully blue flowering enrichment for the perennial garden, along with the true sage or spice sage Salvia officinalis.

After years, I finally succeeded in making the blue flowering ornamental sage native to our garden.

Why this was a real effort and what an enormous effect the sage has is the subject of a short article with a few photos from our garden.

The soil, the soil

Tough struggle with growth

Wikipedia lists between 850 and 900 different species of sage, making it one of the most species-rich genera of the angiospermous plants to which, for example, almost all our cereals, many legumes and also the magnolia belong. Frank's sage garden, a show garden at Frank Fischer's nursery near Freiburg im Breisgau, has 300 varieties of sage alone. 

Carl von Linné gave the plant its generic name Salvia in 1753. The word salvia comes from the Latin word salvare and means to heal. No monastery garden could be without sage. Sage is extremely versatile; most people might not know that chia is the clauses of California chia, a sage officially called Salvia columbariae. Clauses are a special type of decay fruit or broken fruit; the term nutlets is also common.

The true sage or Salvia officinalis originates from the Mediterranean region, grows up to 80 cm high and has long been a useful companion to humans as a medicine and spice. The main active ingredients are the essential oils of sage, they exude, for example, when you rub a leaf between your fingers, a strong smell, which is caused by the thujone, linalool, 1,8-cineole, tannins and bitter substances contained. Sage also contains a large number of flavonoids, which are attributed antioxidant properties. Salvia officinalis contains mainly rosmarinic acid and caffeic acid of the more than 8000 compounds found in nature. In case of overdose, the essential oil is toxic due to its thujone content. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_officinalis) Sage is very popular in the kitchen as a spice, as the herb is said to facilitate the digestion of fatty foods. Saltimboca alla romana is probably one of the classics of Italian cuisine. Sage sautéed in butter is also a simple but delicious addition to pasta.

There are many other types of sage found in nature that have also been used in food or medicine: Salvia tomentosa, Salvia sclarea, Salvia pratensis, Salvia horminum, Salvia triloba, Salvia argentea und Teucrium scorodonia.

In some parts of Germany, the meadow sage, Salvia pratensis, is also common. 

There is Salvia microphylla, whose leaves smell of blackcurrants, the sticky sage Salvia glutinosa is a ground-covering sage whose plant sap is sticky. The fragrant leaves were used to flavour country wine. It is worth delving deeper into the world of sage, you will be surprised.

But this is - actually - about sage as an ornamental plant, and this is where Wikipedia mentions all these varieties, most of which are hybrids, i.e. crosses of different varieties.

Salvia africana-lutea, Salvia apiana, Salvia argentea, Salvia austriaca, Salvia azurea, Salvia blepharophylla, Salvia buchananii, Salvia cacaliifolia, Salvia chamaedryoides, Salvia chamelaeagnea, Salvia chiapensis, Salvia clevelandii, Salvia coccinea, Salvia columbariae, Salvia confertiflora, Salvia darcyi, Salvia discolor, Salvia dolomitica, Salvia dominica, Salvia dorisiana, Salvia dorrii, Salvia elegans, Salvia farinacea, Salvia forsskaolei, Salvia fulgens, Salvia gesneriiflora, Salvia greggii, Salvia guaranitica, Salvia indica, Salvia involucrata, Salvia jurisicii, Salvia leucantha, Salvia mellifera, Salvia mexicana, Salvia microphylla, Salvia muelleri, Salvia multicaulis, Salvia nemorosa, Salvia officinalis, Salvia patens, Salvia pratensis, Salvia prunelloides, Salvia puberula, Salvia purpurea, Salvia recognita, Salvia roemeriana, Salvia regla, Salvia sclarea, Salvia sinaloensis, Salvia spathacea, Salvia splendens, Salvia ×sylvestris, Salvia taraxacifolia, Salvia tiliifolia, Salvia uliginosa, Salvia viridis.

In our garden we mainly grow Salvia officinalis and the hybrid Salvia x sylvestris L., a hybrid of Salvia nemorosa and Salvia pratensis, which is very popular with growers. It is available in many different varieties. I have found the flowering S. nemorosa varieties  Amethyst, Blauhügel,  Blaukönigin, Rosenwein, Viola Klose, Caradonna, Ostfriesland, Mainacht und die Zwergsorte Marcus. White flowering is the variety Adrian, Sensation white and Schneehügel, pink flowering Pink delight, Pink sunday, Rose Queen, Pink Friesland

I don't think I have listed all the varieties of this one variety of sage. What all varieties have in common is that they show different growing heights and slightly different shades of blue. 

The blue wonder - In the afternoon and evening backlight, the sage shines most beautifully in front of the slender Montbretia lancets.
In the afternoon and evening backlight, the sage shines most beautifully in front of the slender Montbretia lancets.
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 430_112_garten_17_1_tgs_7495
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 431_115_garten_20_20200711_133821
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 415_cronhill_salvia_20220528_001
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 417_cronhill_salvia_20220530_002
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 419_cronhill_salvia_20220603_003
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 418_cronhill_salvia_20220611_004
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 420_cronhill_salvia_20220611_010
Photo: Thomas Schürmann - The blue wonder: 428_cronhill_salvia_20220807_018
Sun lover

Salvia nemorosa "Ostfriesland"

As a blue-blooded plant, S. nemorosa's colour makes it very suitable for sunny locations. The blue looks strong and not faded in the bright midday sun. Actually, all salvia should be planted in a very sunny and warm spot.

A few years ago, when I first planted sage in our garden, it died every year after planting and I wondered for a long time why. The answer was obvious from the beginning. We were given a very heavy loamy soil of soil class 9 here as replacement soil in 2004, but it is not permeable to water at all. 

And perhaps this is my most important advice: If you have a soil that seems dense and firm at the outset, that does not fall apart when you lift out a clod with a spade, then you should invest time in soil improvement, because sage tolerates these soils poorly to not at all. Especially in autumn and winter, when it rains a lot, the topmost layers of soil become muddy and the roots don't get enough oxygen in spring.

We have loosened up all the beds where sage now grows successfully with large amounts of expanded clay. I would say in a 1:1 ratio we added Fibotherm Soil Fill 1-5 mm. The advantage of this grain size is that you can't see it in the soil.

Of course, the material is not approved as a soil conditioner, but we only use it in our perennial beds. So no guarantee, at your own risk.

But the sage is doing well. It is also very important in spring to hoe the soil and loosen the soil around the perennials deeply with a digging or rose fork. The perennials will thank you with early and vigorous shoots.

I had already blogged about the bed in 2021, we planted the bed in 2020 (see the first photos) and the other pictures show what it looked like this year.

At the end of the flowering period, we cut back our sage perennials and fertilised them, they are thanking us with new shoots and are starting to flower for the second time.

Ornamental sage is a beautiful perennial for the garden, easy to care for if the soil is set correctly, flowers persistently and for a long time, usually even a second time after pruning, and is a wonderful bee and bumblebee pasture.

tl, dr;

The bed has grown in beautifully, even though the yarrow did not make it in competition with the other perennials.

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