Russian sage
Salvia yangii
also called perovskia
Almost nothing troubles it but wet soil; the plant asks for heat and neglect, and repays both.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray
- Flower color
- Blue
- Sunlight
- Full sun is essential — an open, hot position.
- Watering
- Very drought-tolerant; what it will not forgive is wet roots.
- Feeding
- Rarely needed; poor soil suits it better than rich.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- July
- Pruning
- Cut it hard back to 15-30 cm, and only in spring.
- Mar–Jul Spring Growth
- Jul–Oct Flowering
- Oct–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 8 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 4.5–6 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
It suckers from the root and comes up a metre or two away in a gravel garden, which is either free plants or a slow annexation depending on where it is planted.
The habit is Russian sage’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Lavender, Grasses, Echinacea, Sedum
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com