Salvia, Friendship Sage 'Amistad'

Hummingbirds love this plant. By far this seems to be their favorite flower. Easy to grow, but not very hardy in cold winters. Blooms con...Read Moretinuously from spring to fall. Very dramatic deep purple flowers. Will get tall, over six feet tall when happy. Highly recommended.

If you live in the Americas and you like hummingbirds, you’ll love this plant. I’m in an area that’s a bit 6 a bit 7 and this is an...Read More annual for me (strangely, salvia black and blue has started coming back each year...but alas, not Amistad). It’s a real performer, growing large and floriferous. Hummingbirds cannot resist it. Be sure to pinch a stalk off once it’s flowers have fallen off- that’s how you get it to grow and produce more flowers for months.

Almost forgot to mention it’s ridiculously easy to get more plants, as I discovered the first time I brought it home to my garden. The branches bend and break easily. By the time I got the plant home, three branches were broken. I snapped off the broken branches, pulled off the bottom leaves and stuck them in the ground, which I do for every plant with broken branches, just to see if it will grow. It does. So does black and blue salvia. Just stick a branch in your garden bed that has good soil and water it every day until it starts growing.

Amistad is gorgeous. It survived our 6/7 zone sheltered by a vinyl fence and upside down pots on top. Even a zone 8 David Verity cuphea i...Read Mores returning through this way. Hummingbirds love the flowers. They are slow to show signs of life so don't consider them dead until summer. They should be placed behind smaller salvias so they won't block them. They'll create a thick, green backdrop until they bloom in late June.

....Its not that hardy.
Im in uk zone 9, (a few nights of -5c each winter ) and i lose about half of all the amistad plants i hav...Read Moree regardless of if theyre well established or their growing conditions. They must only be root hardy at this temp and resprout from the ground rather than from last years old wood.
It genuinely flowers from may/june to november/december here, but its not as hardy as initially claimed.

By comparison i have numerous other salvias which are fine and reliably come through the winter (blue note, cerro potosi, melan, african skies, Phyllis' Fancy').

On the upside, amistad is one of the easiest and fastest plants to propagate from cuttings and develops roots in about one week. However it really needs two seasons outside to turn in to a bushy 4foot shrub as in the first year itll reach 3 foot but stays quite skinny.