I planted that exact salvia, maybe five years ago, in the field and in my house garden. I liked it in the house garden - it makes HUGE, crinkly-soft-looking leaves the first year, very attractive just as foliage. In this climate, it's biennial, blooming and then dying in its second year. The form of the blooming stalk is not very useful for cutting - it makes lots of side branches from the stalk, sticking out at a 45-degree angle sideways so they are seriously in the way (and too short to cut and use by themselves), but the stalk all by itself with the side branches stripped off is rather unimpressive. Not many flowers on a stalk look nice at once, and the dead ones turn brown quickly and have to be removed, so the effect is rather skimpy. The stalk gets very tall, making an a nice white show in the garden, so I leave it in my house garden in little groups of three or four, at least a foot apart - two feet is better, those leaves get HUGE - but I don't grow it for cutting any more. It reseeds like crazy - I've never replanted it, I just pull out the seedlings that come up in undesirable places. The biggest drawback is the smell. This one smells BAD. I've seen the smell called "herbal" in catalogs, but boy, that's one stinky herb! In the garden, I only let it grow in spots that aren't easy to get to, so nobody tries to smell it.

Perhaps you'll like it more than I did.

Jeanne

Sage is "earthy." You either like it, or you don't. They always need to be pinched in order to get nice long side shoots, and none of those bushy stems that need to have all the side shoots stripped when picking.

Trish

Butterflylion, I have used clary sage (except mine is light blue) in flower arrangements - they add a victorian/wild flower look to the arrangement and if you need a tall or large arrangement they can't be beat. But the leaves are very smelly - the stalks were quite nice and they dried well too. I think I read somewhere when clary sage leaves are bruised this releases the smell. I like the contrast of their large leaves planted next to other plants with wispy or narrow leaves. At this location mine is planted between rosemary and the curry plant, Helicrysum italicum -

another one, Trish, that some say they like and others don't.

Jeanne, I have never had mine reseed but my location is quite inhospitable except to weeds. The leaves are quite spectacular with all their intricate veining - I have often thought it would be nice to press them in paint and print their impression on a table cloth or something. I did try pressing them in wet concrete at a previous house but was sorry afterwards because leaves and dirt would build up in the impression.

Linda

There are good-smelling salvias, okay-smelling salvias, and bad-smelling salvias. I wouldn't describe it as "earthy" - if my earth smelled like that, I wouldn't be a gardener! It's definitely BAD. In fact, it's the only salvia I've ever smelled whose scent I don't like.

Trish, have you grown this particular cultivar? It's dramatically different in many ways from every other salvia I've ever seen, not just all the salvias I've grown.

Jeanne

Jeanne,

Here is a link to show what my clary sage looks like when it is in bloom, it is the picture on the lower right hand side with the very pale blue flowers. I wouldn't mind having a white flowered clary sage. Where did you get yours? I got mine from mountain valley growers.

flowers.http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/CoopExt/4DMG/Flowers/salvia.htm

I do have another sage growing that has white flowers, It is Salvia argentea or silver sage. Here is what the leaves of this one looks like.
http://www.californiagardens.com/Plant_Pages/Salvia/salvia_argentea.htm

Linda

I couldn't get to the site you gave me, but that's okay. If the flowers are light blue, it's not the cultivar this thread is about, which is Salvia sclarea turkestanica var. alba (white). Salvia sclarea turkestanica (plain, not var. alba) looks like a kind of yucky pale lavender in photos. I haven't grown it, so I don't know what it's really like.

I grew mine from seed, but don't remember where I got the seed from.

Jeanne

White Clary Sage, Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica alba is a beautiful cutflower. It has strong erect stems topped with plumes of white and lime-green bracts, which have a maroon underside. The lime-green accents are very popular in bouquet work again this season. You're going to be removing most of the lower leaves that some posters have mentioned they have found offensive.

This plant is hardy in zones 6-9. We can grow this one because we live in a rather insulated/temperate climate right along the shores of Lake Michigan. Salvias are native to the Mediterranean. They thrive in the heat and humidity here in the Great Lakes Region. They should really do well in Georgia.

The light blue Linda mentioned using in flower arrangements because they add a victorian/wild flower look is Salvia sclarea, var turkestanica. It has larger flowers that are bluer in color. The bracts on these plants are pink/white.

Salvia is extremely easy to grow from seed which is available from Thompson & Morgan.

Trish

I can grow it also, here in zone 5, so I wonder why it has a zone 6 rating. My house garden isn't in a warm microclimate. Hmmm....

The funny thing about the seed is that I know I didn't get it from Thompson & Morgan. I'd admired it in their catalog but hesitated to order from them because their seed is so often not viable. I remember being very proud to have found it elsewhere - but not I can't remember where the elsewhere was! Maybe Seeds of Change? Ah well, it doesn't matter, if Trish got viable seed from T&M, great!

I'll try pinching the main flower stem this spring and see if the side shoots get longer. I wonder if they'll look fuller than the unpinched stems. Maybe it's the climate and/or the large insect population that keeps the stems from holding more than a few flowers at once, before the flowers wilt. The same thing happens with snapdragons here. I know the snapdragon florets wilt and fall off as soon as they are pollinated, so I can get them fuller by cutting and keeping in the house for a few days, letting more florets open away from all the pollinating insects. Maybe the same thing will happen with clary sage - I'll have to try it and find out, just for fun. We have a very large insect population here, being in a fairly wild area where nobody is spraying much of anything.

Jeanne

Select Seeds has the seed in their catalog. They describe it as a biennial for zones 5-9.

Here is a link that might be useful: White Clary Sage

That's probably where I got it from. Now, with a few years of growing seeds under my belt, I'm not sure Select Seeds are a much better risk than T&M. I've gotten some that germinated well, but also several types that didn't germinate at all, from them. Given the choice, I'd go with Select Seeds. What I've consistently ordered from them are a couple of snapdragons that are a little faster than Rocket: Double Azalea Pink and Double Azalea Apricot. I just never found them elsewhere, but grew them most years. They are faster than any other double snap I've tried.

Jeanne