The reds I grow tend to be either seed sown such as s.roemeria and s.coccinea or the shrubby microphylla/greggii/jamensis types. I do grow s.elegans but honestly wonder why I bother going to the effort of overwintering it every year because the flowers are late,small and needy of endless irrigation. I loathe 'Hotlips, but absolutely adore 'Red Bumble' and 'Jezebel'. I have grown s.darcyii but ages ago, along with various reddish 'Wishes' types. I have never grown the dumpy littles. s.splendens because it is graceless and nasty...and have also grown salvias which creep into the orange colours - confertiflora and gesneriiflora but they are enormous and overstayed their welcome.

Mostly though, I prefer the blues - I bought a new one today - s.corrugata and s.sagittata a coupla weeks ago.This can be a deep and dodgy rabbit hole.

Excellent @rosaprimula!

This can be a deep and dodgy rabbit hole.

As they say Variety is the spice of life...nd this is particularly true when it comes to the garden.

I, on the other hand, have had great success with Hot Lips. It is nearly fully evergreen here blooms from March to December or January, tolerates incredible neglect and produces far more flowers than any other salvia I've grown. One of the features I find fascinating is that the earliest blooms start out a solid red, then change to the red/white bicolor for most of the season, finally fading to pure white as the days shorten. It's like 3 plants in one!!

A new pot of Amethyst Lips will be going to my new garden.

I would recommend Betsy Clebsch's New Book of Salvias (later edition is better but even the first book is endlessly informative) for a truly excellent deep dive into many salvia including their suitability for various garden conditions.

Amethyst lips is even worse (for me)...absolutely minuscule and practically invisible blooms. Definitely being sent to compost heaven next year. Horses for courses though...it isn't really about success or failure (at least not with the Hotlips performance), it's just subjective personal preferences. I have quite a few pinks!

I think this is probably my last year with Amistad, Rouge - it is bloody enormous. Have the bluer Animo to try instead (and hope it is not as behemoth sized as Amistad).

I've had good luck with S. splendens vanhouttei as far as season long blooms and color, but it seems to like a little less than full sun to do really well. I keep cuttings over winter under lights and sometimes the bloom on them is better than anything I get when they're outside.

The S. greggi types have never impressed me, the blooms seem sparse to my eye, but maybe I need to give them another try!

They often are a bit small and sparse, katob, but a good sized shrub can produce thousands of blooms over a very long period of time...although they do benefit from removing the spikes of spent blooms They can be any size from around 2 feet to over 6 feet , with considerable variety in the growth habit. Nachtvlinder is a definite sprawler and looks good overhanging a wall(, while Sierra San Antonio is a very upright grower which benefits from growing with supporting plants or tall grasses. I do think Z6 might also be a bit challenging for these somewhat tenderish shrubs.

On the whole, I prefer the stronger colours although Icing Sugar, a warm pink, is looking exceptionally fulsome at the moment. I don't really consider these as specimen shrub - they are much better in a mixed border of other airy blooms such as verbenas, cosmos, coreopsis, scrambling geraniums, even hemerocallis Like grasses, they benefit from sun at their backs and space to move.

I never really got over the horrible UK tendency of growing s.splendens with blue lobelia and white alyssum in a horrifically dated patriotic display.

https://www.chicagobotanic.org/sites/default/files/pdf/plantevaluation/no44_salvia.pdf

(Chicago Botanical Gardens Plant Evaluation Notes: 2019)

I think this is probably my last year with Amistad, Rouge - it is bloody enormous.

Yup. My solution for this is to plant it in a less than optimal location ie not enough sun ;)

OK, I'll play (crawls into rabbit hole). After growing a bunch of the S. greggii types, Radio Red has impressed the most. Non-stop heavy bloom, pretty saturated color, although it does go through temperature-based changes. But most of all, it does not retain those ugly tan seed capsules the way most of the others do. I'm growing Royal Bumble this year and although I think the color is a little better than Radio Red (more orange in it, less pink), it retains those dreadful capsules in my garden, as do all of the purples I've grown so far. Interestingly, those that have the retained seed capsules also seem to reseed readily. No seedlings at all from Radio Red! Amethyst Lips is a frustrating plant, in sun the flowers seem to wash out, while the abundant stems seem to advance, harming the appearance of the flowers. It looks much better on cloudy days. I also have Oriental Dove, it is a fabulous color, and a little non-white bi-colored, but the flowers are small like Amethyst Lips, and it hasn't initiated very many new flowering stems. It looks a little unhappy and I think its getting too much water (auto-irrigated), but Radio Red right next to it isn't minding a bit. I grew Mirage Cherry Red last year and it bloomed amazingly well, great color, but l lost it over the winter. My garden is rapidly filling up, and becoming shadier, so I think my Salvia growing days are numbered. Love how they attract the hummers though. We had resident Rufus hummers here all summer long!

Great post @artinnature. Thank you.

My garden is rapidly filling up, and becoming shadier, so I think my Salvia growing days are numbered.

Same here. That's why I will soon have all my tender salvia in containers which I can place in sunnier locales. And so I am trying to plant ones that don't grow too huge.

I will keep my eye out for "Radio Red" as I would like a red flowering salvia but I am pretty sure I have never seem it around :(.

By chance has anyone had experience with Salvia "Roman Red" (splendens x darcyi)?

The "Wish" series, while not having a true red among them, make for spectacular temperennial accents. I haven't tried to overwinter them but seeing as how numerous supposedly tender Salvias can handle zone 6b winters here in central Kentucky, it should be worth a try.

This year I am trialing a couple of Salvia greggii hybrids, including the reputedly cold-hardy "Furman's Red". I'll be taking cuttings to overwinter indoors just in case.

Other Salvias rated as perennial only in zone 8 and milder climates, including "Black and Bloom", "Purple and Bloom", "Black and Blue" and "Amistad" have overwintered here with good siting and mulching.

Thank you for the CBG evaluation notes, Rouge. I find these comparisons can be really helpful.

I think this is probably my last year with Amistad, Rouge - it is bloody enormous.

Hey @rosaprimula I thought of your comment when I perused our sprawling Amistad this morning....due to not enough sun.

I love salvias and grow over 10 varieties. Being at zone8b they are reliable perennials.

Hot Lip grow well for me and blooms most of the season except for hot summer. I love the smell of its leaves the most, a pungent pleasant smell of ripen tropical fruits. The bi-color picture was what captured me to buy but after it bloomed in the garden I actually like the pure red blooms the best. And it stays compact and relatively small which is a plus. I got an “autumn sage” a few weeks ago and like its color too.

This is the first year I grow ”midnight model”. It is a true blue color without the purple hint (or very little). I have much expectation for it next year.

But in the fall, Mexican bush sage steals the show. It is worth all the waiting

Happy fall gardening 🍂

Salvia leucantha is a knockout here in central Kentucky, flowering from September well into October. The variety "Santa Barbara" (relatively dwarf with all purple flowers, not pictured) has performed beautifully this year. Cuttings have been taken as insurance for 2024.

Keep this thread going guys and gals....I am getting lots of ideas.

"Salvia leucantha"...sounds wonderful @rusty_blackhaw but I am a bit iffy going with late flowering salvias as it is definitely possible that they dont get a chance to flower if we get an early frost. Having said that I enjoyed lots a "Pineapple Sage" I had....last year I think as it did get time to flower before the cold weather set in.

A coupla weeks ago, I was looking resentfully at my salvia elegans - takes up a lot of space, demanding of water (cos potted) and requires winter nurturing. Planning planticide. And yet, it is now in fulsome bloom looking rather lovely (and smelling gorgeous). Too big to overwinter indoors (like my few remaining pelargoniums) so now dithering (again) about getting rid this year. (The greenhouse is already stuffed with various salvias (including 2 leucanthas, sagitatta, corrugata, reptens, a coupla guaranticas, all the cuttings and all the seedlings. Easy propagating tends to amplify the space problems. Plus, I have fallen hard for penstemons...so many plants, so little space.

so many plants, so little space

Never were truer words ever spoken@rosaprimula.

Another thread got me to thinking about the 'Cherry Queen' that I used to have and I was planning to get another one of those but it doesn't seem to be commercially available anymore. I think it was either a greggii or greggii hybrid but it would winter over for me. It was showy and a long bloomer.

Darcyii wintered over for me for several years too. (Another one that I don't have anymore).

I think both of those fell victim to my hubby mowing where he shouldn't have. : (

salvia microphylla 'Cerro Potosi' is one of the hardiest shrubby salvias, Christie, and is still in commerce. Although the microphyllas tend to grow larger than most of the greggiis or jamensis, I have found them to be extremely long-lived, long-blooming and utterly reliable. The very first salvia I ever grew (s. microphylla var. neurepia) is still in my allotment, some 30 years later. Smaller reliable cultivars include the 'Mirage' series. Topping out at around 2feet, Mirage Cherry should also do well for you, Christie.

I usually have a few ’Black and Blue'. One year they all grew very tall, and the hummingbirds were fighting over them with a lot of their high pitched twittering, and dive bombing each other. I also always enjoyed 'Lady in Red', but I haven't seen that one in years. My golden pineapple sage is still in bloom, though getting a bit sparse. A late hummingbird found it yet. We will see if the flowers survive the cold night.

I love "Pineapple Sage". But I dont think I would have tried it if the foliage had not been so eye catching as it is so long w/o flowers.

A late hummingbird found it yet.

I keep track of the presence of humming birds and I have not seen any since...early October.

I saw my last hummingbird on October 21.

This thread had me taking cuttings of my new 'Blue Suede' Salvia I bought in August. I have no idea if I'll take care of it all winter to get to spring with it, but we'll see. [g]

So I sowed a bunch of a new (to me) reds, somehow failing to note the words 'Giant Brazilian'. Now I have 8 or so s.subrotunda which can grow to 9ft tall (but usually only 6ft or so in gardens!). What was I thinking? Quite obviously, was having one of my absent brain days. I seem to have also sown a large number of giant umbels (melanoselinum and opopanax) despite promising myself it was going to be tiny alpines all the way this year. Plus, there is an awful lot of stuff hanging around from last year. I am going to have to be heartless, evicting all the dahlias, probably, as I need the pots for the salvias.

failing to note the words 'Giant Brazilian'.

LOL