Salvias

Lyndi Garnett

Thursday, 12 July, 2018

As a follow up from our visit to the Salvia Display Garden and Lindi's own garden back in March, Lindi came and gave members a fascinating talk on the diversity of salvias.

Lyndi Garnett was introduced by our president, Terry. She is associated with the Victorian Salvia Study Group who have a salvia display garden at the Nobelius Heritage Park. The garden is maintained by volunteers who attend every Wednesday to weed, mulch, feed and prune. Lyndi invited members of CMGC to join the group and/or volunteer on Wednesday to help with the ongoing work. “Many hands make light work”!

The Salvia group issue a quarterly ‘Salvia News’, hard copy or on-line. It includes a calendar of events, sales, exhibitions.

Lyndi accompanied her talk with named photos of many interesting and beautiful Salvias.

She told us that Salvias belonged to the laminacii family.

Identification: they have no petals or sepals but 3 corollas or hoods and 2 calyxes.

There are broadly 3 different types.

(i) tubular flowers: often tall so best grown against a fence or through shrubs, frost tender and best grown under trees/ shrubs to keep the roots cool.

(ii) A plumper flower: the most common. Tough and hardy.

(iii) Falcate flower: rosette type growth, herbaceous (winter dormant), often with a large curving tube and open hood.

(iv) They are further divided into greggiis, small leaves and a single stem and macrophyllas, large, veined leaves and slow spreading.

Lyndi said that there are Salvias for all conditions. Some like hot sun, some require moisture, some need shade. Many can be grown in pots, especially the winter dormant varieties. Snails don’t eat them and you know where they are.

Salvias must be cut hard to keep healthy and flowering. Cut to a green bud and they should come back in around 5 weeks.

Lyndi said she likes Salvias because of their long flowering period, vast array of colours and their general toughness.

She encouraged us to look on the website to identify and select suitable plants for our gardens.

http://salvias.org.au/

Here is a copy of Lindi's notes on Salvias.

Salvias are one of the largest genera in the world with over 900 different species and almost as many cultivars and varities. Salvias are a diverse and exciting family of plants with a huge range of colours, from deep velvet purples and blues through rich reds, vibrant pinks, pale yellows, pure whites, brown, and even a black salvia. No garden should be without at least a few. In Fact there would be a salvia to suit every niche in a garden, whether it's in the sun or a dappled shady position. With a bit of planning, it is possible to have a salvia in flower in the garden all year round.

Given their good looks, ease of cultivation and drought tolerance it is surprising that salvias are not more widely grown.

Aromatic Salvias

Many salvias are aromatic with a high oil content in their leaves and have been used in medicine or for cooking all over the world. Those salvias with strongly scented leaves also seem to be unattractive to grazing animals like rabbits, possums and even kangaroos. Also, many leaf-eating and sap sucking insects are repelled by the scent, making the strongly scented salvias useful companion plants in the garden, as they confuse and repel pests.

You may like to grow some strongly scented salvias near the vegetable garden and under fruit trees, where they repel pests but also attract bees to help with pollination.

Food Sources

In their natural habitat salvias are important sources of nectar for birds, bees, butterflies and insects. In America salvias are essential to the tinyhummingbirds that feed on them. In Australia the same salvias attract honey-eaters and spinebills who delight in their nectar. My pineapple sage lures the beautifully marked eastern spinebills to my garden right through winter.Other local birds come to feed on salvia seeds and the insects attracted to the flowers. Blue and mauve flowered salvias also attract butterflies.

Large numbers of species and cultivars, and the ease of cross-pollination has given rise to a large number of new cultivars. The numbers are increasing all the time because of new cultivars and new discoveries in the wild.The diversity and breadth of this family has given rise to a large group of passionate and committed collectors all over the world.

The Salvia Study Group have tirelessly worked to create this delightful and fascinating Display Garden in Nobelius Heritage Park in Emerald. We are so lucky to be able to go there to see them growing and observe how they survive the summers without any extra watering and the cold winters, growing in a variety of different conditions. There is a salvia for every garden position and thanks to the continues effort to maintain this Display Garden, we can go and see how these salvias grow and perform before we put them into our gardens.

Find out morre: http://salvias.org.au