Perhaps depends on how gorgeous you want your flowers to be NOW. This year, my pink and fusia salvias are back, pink pentas survived but not gorgeous. GW posters have warned that pentas need replacing every few years anyway. But I see no nasturtiums.

They are newly planted. Maybe a month in the ground. Some of the pentas were suffering so I moved them and they are rallying. They were in the 9 packs from HD, so they are pretty small. The salvias are droopy, except for the blooms which are fine.

How did your pentas and salvias do in the heat of the summer?

Salvias love summer. The smaller pentas, not so much. They tend to get scraggly, however the taller ones (IF you can find them anywhere) hold up very well in summer and are perennial, as long as you don't let them freeze. The main thing with them is to take cuttings every spring and summer for the next year.

The salvias are dark red and I think it said they would get 3 feet or so, I am guessing that would be a perrenial. The salvia is a purple but I thought 'blue" was in the name but I didn't think it was "Black and Blue". The stalk of the bloom is purple and it's really bright and bold, not dark. I was sure both tags said perennial (but that doesn't always mean anything).

DG: MRT?

MRT Lawn and Garden Center

Carol in Jacksonville

I LOVED my black and blue salvia and it did great for a good year. It grew so nicely and bloomed all the time and the biggest blackest bumble bee would visit it.

All of a sudden it failed, I have no idea what happened. It went pretty quickly.

I will totally get a new one in the future, even if it does not last forever it is such a beautiful plant.

SMC - Black and Blue salvia dies back (goes dormant) in the winter. Many of the perennial salvias do. I bought a SallyFun Blue salvia year before last, and it is just now coming up again. Sadly, I trompled it while working on the bed, and I hope I did not kill it. :(

Oh I hope not also! I bet it recovers.

well apparently I loved it so much that I believed I had it for much longer than I did! I searched the forum and found that in June it was a goner! but I got it in October so 3 season out of 4 is not so bad. It grew so much like 5 times the original size I just could not believe it was less than a year I had it. Maybe If I would have cut it down for the summer it would of come back for fall, but I freaked, pulled it up, transferred it about a foot during summer and in winter I got tired of looking at sticks in the ground and pulled it up. ... so I;ll skip looking for one for spring and wait again until fall and this time give it more shade. Maybe if I prune it for summer it will survive for a full year and return.

I really loved it it had the most amazing flowers and it was always in bloom !!!

One of my favorite salvias is "Victoria Blue," which is also called "Mealy Cup Sage." It's usually easy to find in the big box stores, and it roots really easy from cuttings AND puts out seeds. I bought one once for 25 cents in a 3-inch pot on a WalMart markdown rack and it grew like a weed for 3 years, then died during a really rainy summer, but lo and behold! Seedlings came up the next year and grew like mad too!

The key to pentas is to find the Pentas lanceolata, or large pentas that are normally only sold in nurseries that specialize in butterfly and hummingbird plants. The red ones are one of the best nectar plant for butterflies that one can find. These pentas would last three or four years in Central or Southern Florida. Hard freezes kill them.

As described above, there are many different kinds of salvias. I would say that as a generalization most like some shade. The two best for me are the Miniata, which is an excellent flowering plant for shady locations, and the Amistad, which is big, healthy and very attractive for hummingbirds. The Miniata will self seed. The Amistad will not.

Thanks, Tom! I love the taller pentas. Wish I could find them up here.

I just was looking at Salvias and found one called Salvia madrensis (common name Forsythia Sage) that I want badly! It's only grown from cuttings, so of course, it's expensive. Everything I want it out of my budget. LOL