I have had it survive in a pot for the last two winters. No protection. Nursery pot, I bought it but can't find anywhere to plant it.

Perhaps it rotted out? They do need good drainage.

Recommend planting earlier in year to get established before cold temps. I have been trying for 3 years with no success in getting this one or other microphylla/greggii varieties to come back. Drainage close to perfect in my yard with lean loam, high sand content. Winter night temps are a few degrees colder than most areas. I am a couple of miles from the Olympia airport. Since they are widely advertised as Zone 7, I'm not sure what the problem is - don't know why they would be reliable in, e.g., Zone 7 NC (couple of nurseries there that sell lots of salvias) and not here, but high heat requirements is an easy guess. They are native to Teas and Mexico, so they like to bake. Have others has good luck with these?

Going on the 5th year in my garden with this one. Seems to be easy. Regular garden soil, sun about 2/3 of the day, water a few times during the dry stretch. Maybe I'm just lucky as I have lost plenty of other touchy salvias over the years.

Apart from differences in hardening off between cool and hot summer climates zones given for plants by commercial sources are often optimistic. They want to sell as widely as possible. The zone indicated may be where the plant starts to die out frequently rather than the one to which it is genuinely hardy - in other words the plants are borderline in Zone _ rather than hardy all the way through that zone. (The phrase "Hardy to Zone_" is often used) But perhaps the most common thing is to look at the average annual minimum temperature range given for each USDA zone and then indicate a plant is suitable for that zone because that is where its supposed minimum temperature falls. For instance a locally based mailorder catalog used to list multiple kinds of plants as hardy to Zone 7 that weren't, the compiler apparently thinking that because the nursery site occasionally got down into the 0-10F range that was the zone the nursery was in - and anything surviving that range there was then shown to be hardy to that zone. So maybe 'Hot Lips' has shown a tendency to freeze and die between 0 and 10F somewhere, and therefore gets labeled as "Hardy to Zone 7". Since 0-10F is the range of average minimums for that zone, it will sometimes get much colder there, during which times 'Hot Lips' won't be hardy at all.

The USDA site recommends planting stock rated one zone higher than the zone you are in. Although this would seem to be the case in this instance the Zone 7 rating given by the nurseries for 'Hot Lips' may not really be accurate, perhaps for one of the above reasons.

Sunset Western Garden Book assigns S. microphylla (under which it lists 'Hot Lips') Sunset Climate Zones 7-24. Except for Brookings to Gold Beach southern Oregon coast banana belt and Rogue Valley Oregon and Washington are Sunset 1-6.

Great information bboy. Thanks!