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Salvia clevelandii

I first encountered the fragrance of this plant at the Santa Barbara Mission in California, and was overwhelmed. So very fragrant!! I am now attempting to grow it in my Zone 10 (8a/8b) garden in Bakersfield. The hardest part, I have found, is resisting the urge to give it water...

I have grown many cultivars of this plant in my zone 8 Portland Oregon home over the last 3 years. We have had three winters in a row with a hard freeze, this most recent being VERY early in the season. My experience is they all freeze very easily around here with the exception of the cultivar 'alpine' that they sell at Las Pilitas nursery out of California. For some reason 'Alpine' has been leaps and bounds hardier than the rest for our climate and soil.

I had mulched the crown of all of my salvias so it appears that the frozen ones will recover in the spring. I did not mulch last year and lost ALL of my salvia clevelandii frozen to the core. That being said I echo all the positives that everybody is saying. I planted some along the front sidewalk and they stop all the passers-by with their intense fragrance, seemingly made stronger when they are wet.

Although Salvia clevelandii is suppose to be hardy for zones 9 + it has grown in my zone 8 garden for over 8 years.

This is one of the garden's precious plants. I have managed to grow more from the seeds this year. We use the leaves for incense. It is sold on our area as Mountain sage.

I am growing the "Alan Chickering" cultivar of this sage.

When it blooms it gets to six feet in a showy display of the pagoda-tiered blooms, and it smells amazingly fragrant. Bees and hummingbirds love the nectar. It's a wonderful culinary sage, but it's important to go easy with it, since it's very strong.

It was one of the first plants I planted, and it survived a period where I couldn't water at all during a hot summer, so I give it high marks for xeriscaping. It needs pruning or it just gets bigger and bigger; we prune it back in the winter.

I love the unique bloom of this salvia. It was given as a housewarming gift and we were told to keep the blooms once they're spent, dry them, and burn them for incense. It handled much neglect in its gallon-container until we could get to it. Great xeriscaping plant.

This sage grew to a nice size over a couple of years in the somewhat dry, clay-ish soil at my old house.

I enjoy salvias in general, but this one is special to me because of the strange looking flowers. They look like double-tiered flying saucers.

Salvia clevelandii is an evergreen perennial sub-shrub with wrinkled 1" leaves on downy stems. Hardy to zones 9-10, flowers from spring to summer with violet or white blooms over gray-green foliage. Provide light sun, well-drained soil.