A little bit about me and my Salvias

Salvia splendens and Robin

I started collecting salvias about 15 years ago and now have one of the largest collections in the UK. For a long time I had thought that salvias were the rather gaudy, small, red plants commonly used in bedding schemes. On visiting a friend's garden, I saw a spectacular Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica and I was hooked.

One thing led to another and before long I had over 100 species and cultivars. There are about 900 species of salvia, half of these being native to Mexico and South America. The rest are found in Europe, Africa and Asia. There are many which may no longer be in cultivation, but plant hunters to foreign lands are constantly finding new and rare species.

The aim of this website is to share my observations and pictures of my favourite salvias. It had been an idea of mine for some time and the fact that it is now a reality, is thanks to the encouragement and enthusiasm of my friend Stuart Hodgson. 

As I am not a registered National Collection Holder, I am not obliged to grow any that I do not consider garden-worthy. Some salvias, e.g. S. reflexa are just plain weedy, many of the beautiful Californian species, e.g. S. pachyphylla hardly ever flower in the British climate, and some of the South American salvias, e.g. S. florida are too monstrous to keep in a 12ft by 8ft greenhouse!

Most of the photographs have been taken by myself and Peter Vidgeon. I have had permission from Michael Charters, to whom I am grateful, to use some of his pictures of Californian salvias.

I would particularly like to offer sincere thanks to my dear friend, Rolando Uria, who has supplied many superb photographs for this site. A major improvement to some of my poor efforts.

I have downloaded many salvia pictures on to my computer from other websites and cannot always remember if they were mine or not. If you find a picture that I have used without permission, please email me and I will remove it if required.

There are many more Salvias which I intend to add to this website. These will be included when suitable photographs become available. There will always be some doubtful identifications within such a large genus of plants. If there are some which you think might have been mis-identified, please inform me, with as much detail as possible. But bear in mind that I am not a botanist.

I would like to thank the following Salvia enthusiasts, for sharing their plants and knowledge with me:

I am not a botanist, nor do I run a nursery. Please email me if you have any queries.

Robin Middleton