Salvia involucrata 'Bethelii'
I've always admired this woody based perennial Salvia for its terminal racemes of bright pink, tubular flowers. Capable, with an established clump, of reaching heights of 1.5m / 5ft plus during our not overly warm summer and autumn seasons, this Mexican plant certainly adds brightness to any more exotic garden until the cold puts paid to its annual display.
The only problem is that its not that winter hardy. The RHS have it as H3: hardy in coastal and relatively mild parts of the UK (-5 to 1C). I've tried it in my own Plymouth garden, lost it in the hard winters of 2010 and 2011, and, for space reasons, not tried again. Mind you, my soil is rather damp and I think it needs better drainage to survive our harder winters.
This certainly seems the case at The Garden House, where Nick (Hayward), the head gardener has been experimenting with a number of these sub shrub sages in the walled garden. Despite some sharp frosts down to -7 or -8C it's doing very well under the Wisteria clad wall of the east end of the lower terrace, flowering from midsummer onwards in conjunction with Salvia 'Amistad' and a clump of the impressively foliaged Canna iridiflora 'Ehemannii'. Perhaps it's a little hardier than I thought and worthy of consideration for a recently cleared patch under my south wall. Time to ring the changes yet again?
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