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Blaze of colour
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This is the best time of year to plant Salvia if you are keen on making your garden attractive
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THE SALVIA is a muchoverlooked garden plant. Belonging to the vast family of Sage, its very tendency to grow wild is its undoing. To its credit, the Salvia adds life to gardens with its vivid colour, and a choice of dwarf or tall varieties is available. Its greatest virtue is that it makes a colourful border plant, even if growth is a little straggly. However, the new dwarf varieties make for perfect showy borders and can easily be kept in shape.
Many varieties
The most common Salvia is the traditional Scarlet Sage, with its deep green foliage setting off the spikes of red flowers. Gardeners have a choice of Blaze of Fire, Red Blazer, Scarlet Midget and St. John's Fire. Names of varieties may differ at different seed sellers or nurseries.
Pink, white and a deep purple- blue are the other colours of Salvia. Herbaceous Salvias are the silky-leaved S. argenta, S. uliginosa and S. turkistanica with hairy leaves. Shrub-like Salvias are those with tri-coloured leaves such as S. triclour and S. purpurascens, which has purple flowers.
Best treated as annuals, Salvia is easy to grow from seed. It is easier to buy ready seedlings that are grown many in a pot and then transplant them wherever required. Salvia needs full sun and well-drained soil. In Chennai, it does well during the cooler months.
This is the best time of year for gardeners to plant seeds/ seedlings to get the full benefit of Salvia's colour in the months to come. Ý
RUPA GOPAL
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Madurai
Mangalore
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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