Love your weeds
All about the shrubby salvias and their cultivars
Maybe the few who read my blog would have noticed that my Salvia shop or online mail order adverb has disappeared?
Continue reading “Yoke’s Magic Salvias now closed for business!”It has been a while since my last post as have the excuse of seeing a friend in Tuscany on her herb farm which was like being in paradise. Nature and plants there are just stunning.
But whilst I’ve been away the salvias put on a lot of growth and there has been a lot of activity in the nursery, this being the busy season for all us gardeners!
Some weeks have gone past since I last wrote about my Salvia nursery here in the West-Midlands and thought I’d update on our latest new varieties which we collected from our good friends and colleagues, Hillview Nursery in Shropshire.
Continue reading “Salvia Chapter 9: Salvias from Hillview Nursery”
You may have heard about Salvia ‘Hot Lips’? The name is certainly intriguing and actually very apt!
I have used it as my logo from when it first came about and I started my Yoke’s Magic Garden business!
Continue reading “Salvia ‘Hot Lips’; the wondrous one!”You might be wondering are salvias hardy? Hopefully this post will answer all your questions.
Salvias are a fashionable plant as they seem to have been popping up in recent years in your local garden centre, on markets and even in your local supermarkets.They are showy and very colourful, come in reds, pinks and purples and as a salvia collector and salvia lover I’ve noticed that in this very large group of plants many varieties are either towards the red and others are totally on the other scale; towards the blue of the spectrum, and then obviously all those colours in between as well as the whites, greys and pastel-shades in between!
They are very seductife as the colours are shouting out; buy me!
Continue reading “Are Salvias hardy?”
Last week I wrote about the purchase of my first few salvias for my new venture: Yoke’s Magic Salvias. These first few salvias were particularly important for me as they were some cuttings of my Rodbaston-named varieties, which I had been worried about that they might have gone extinct forever..
Here on the left: Salvia ‘Moonlight Over Ashwood’ has unusual yellow-green variegated foliage making the plant attractive even when not in flower!
Continue reading “Salvia Chapter 8 Salvias from Ashwood and Robin!”
Thought I’d do an update of the progress we are making with building up my collection of Salvias since a few weeks ago.
Our first few salvias came from Wollerton Old Hall, near Market Drayton in Shropshire. As well as a magnificent garden to visit in the season, they also have a nursery, propagating and selling specialist plants from their garden with approx 90 different varieties of salvias as well as a good number of Iris, Phlox and Cupheas.
Continue reading “Yoke’s Magic Salvia’s Nursery is growing and Wollerton Old Hall visit!”
This is a beautiful Salvia found by my late friend and Salvia collector, Robin Middleton. See here
It has proved to be a very popular one, now sold by several nurserymen in Britain!
It came from seed found on the cross Salvia ‘Silkes Dream’ see here
This was the most vigorous seedling, which Robin grew on and gave it the name I suggested to him in honour of my dear friend Penny, who was a beautiful girl and left this world far too young.
She really loved the salvias of which I planted several in her late gardens. And she particularly loved this colour; so a more apt tribute couldn’t be found! To my surprise it has survived many cold winters here in the Midlands. But some shelter would be recommended.
Penny’s Smile’ is a bushy, upright plant to 1.2m high, evergreen if not cut back by frost, with small, aromatic, pale to mid-green leaves. It has large, showy individual flowers, similar size as one of its known parent, ‘Silkes Dream’ and the inflorescences are also well above the foliage and with many flowers for a long flowering season!
In the first chapter about the salvias I told the story how I became hooked to them and this time I would like to introduce you to all of the Rodbaston ones!
There are 6 ‘survivors’ of the original 7 which is much better than I had hoped a few months ago!
Fortunately for me was that the owners and present Head Gardener of Wollerton Old Hall had still kept the varieties after they got them from me for the RHS trials from 2012-2014 of what I call the ‘Shrubby salvias’ (Salvia microphylla, S. greggii, S. x jamensis and varieties + cultivars/hybrids).
Continue reading “The Rodbaston Salvias!”
The most easy, versatile ones for use in sunny borders or pots are which I call the ‘Shrubby, small leaved Salvias’. These are hardy to at least – 10 degr. C. and much more than this in my experience. Here below are some tips on how to grow them:
Continue reading “Salvias: Chapter 4, The Shrubby ones!”