Salvia 'Pozo Blue'

Salvia Pozo Blue is very drought tolerant three foot green-gray perennial. A hybrid of Salvia clevelandii and Salvia leucophylla. It is one of our older Las Pilitas selections. We named it for the small, stage coach stop town of Pozo near the Santa Margarita Nursery. Its flowering period is about 6 weeks with violet-blue flowers. Foliage is very fragrant like Musk Sage (Salvia clevelandii).

Salvia 'Pozo Blue' survives and looks good on rainfall from 7"-35". Summer watering has not been a problem here, but may shorten the plants life. Salvia Pozo Blue has been stable in a heavy clay and beach sand. We planted some in a sandy garden in Los Osos where the salt spray burned the foliage off of most of the other plants we planted and its lovely and shows no sign of burn. We have been told it is better looking than Salvia 'Allen Chickering' in form and foliage. Flowers are similar.

This is THE NATIVE BUTTERFLY BUSH. We've seen about thirty species of butterflies and a lot of hummingbirds working the flowers. If you have the room for a butterfly hedge, go for it. Quail LOVE this plant. If you dead head the seed heads off and throw them onto the ground, the quail will be there for a day or two eating seeds.

Plant the sages about four foot apart for almost perfect fill-in. Mix a  few Salvia brandegei, Salvia 'Celestial Blue' or Salvia clevelandii 'Alpine' for a longer flowering period, or just blast the neighborhood with fragrance and color with miles of Pozo Blue.

This sage has also done well in the Anza Borrego Desert area, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and most years, Portland, Oregon.

A fairly cold tolerant sage, to 5F degree with little or no damage (but can't sustain days of continual cold below 32F). This sage froze to the ground at 0. I burned off the dead stuff and it started to grow back from the crown before we graded it off and put plants on the resulting pad. (We're very gentle and loving to your plants, really!) Of 200 one gallon plants on hand with the December 1990 frost hit, 3 plants survived. That block had 13,000 plants in it, the three Pozo Blues were the survivors. If you drop below -4 or it stays frozen in the 20's (F) for days, it may not recover (or it may, this is one tough plant). Its structure does not support snow real well though. So if you get more than 3-4 inches of wet snow each year, the sage may be a little flat. Click here for more about