Victorian
gardeners had many varieties of Salvia to choose from.
Most could be struck from existing plants and potted
on to provide summer colour in the garden.
The
specimen figured here, Salvia Boliviana, was
a native of Bolivia, introduced to Europe by Van Houtte,
of Ghent, and grown largely as a conservatory
plant for February flowering. It was a robust-growing
shrub, producing glorious panicles of scarlet blooms.
I
could be propagated by rooting cuttings on a mild hotbed
in March. The Bolivian Sage was usually kept as a pot
plant, being shifted on to ever-larger pots as it grew,
but care had to be taken not to pot them on into too
commodious a pot - a nine-inch pot was believed to be
the largest they should be allowed to grow in.
As
the flower spikes developed they needed to be fed a
weak solution of liquid manure, and the temperature
of the glasshouse kept to between 60 - 70 d. Fahrenheit.
The greenhouses at Kew had some fine examples.
