Midnight Model Salvia

You don’t have to be a fashionista to appreciate the enduring beauty of the Fashionista® Midnight Model Sage, a new form of a classic garden plant that isn’t going out of fashion any time soon. It quickly sprouts in spring to rise to 2 feet tall and a litter wider, with the lower two-thirds of the many stems covered in bright green leaves with a rough, textured surface. The upper third is a dense spike of striking rich blue flowers that are unusually large, with pronounced ‘hoods’, which really enhances the color and brightness. Long-lasting in bloom, the spikes produce new blooms every day, as the old ones fade away, keeping it in flower in early summer for 3 or 4 weeks. If you dead-head, new spikes keep coming for weeks more. It’s very hardy (to zone 3) and easy to grow, looking great anywhere in your garden. Grow it in classic perennial beds, or around the edges of your shrub beds. Plant it on slopes and banks, or at the sunny edges of woodland in semi-wild settings. It is also ideal for meadow gardens, mixing it with ornamental grasses, cone-flowers, and other prairie plants (although it isn’t native to North America).

• Large, striking, midnight-blue flowers, week after week
• Fabulous garden flower for early summer color
• Drought tolerant and great for meadow gardens
• Attractive rich-green foliage on the lower stems
• Vigorous, cold-hardy and very easy to grow

Plant the Fashionista® Midnight Model Sage in full sun, or with a little afternoon shade, but not too much. Grow it in a well-drained soil, of any kind, including poor, sandy and rocky soils. It is pest and disease-free, and not eaten by deer, so it’s very easy to new gardeners, but exciting enough for old-hands. Remove flower spikes, but not whole stems, once they have stopped producing new blooms – besides looking neater, this encourages new flower heads to keep coming. Cut stems back to an inch or two tall in late fall – new growth grows rapidly the next spring.