Garden sage is among the flowering, fragrant plants in the garden, but has additional medicinal and other properties that protect its surrounding plants from pest and diseases. The botanical name is salvia officinalis and this is one out of 1000 sage species.
Garden sage is also grown in the drier regions like Mediterranean; it has two characteristics like resisting drought ant its capacity to survive in alkaline soil. This boosts the value of these sages in this dry region. Garden Sages require some special care like cutting off tips of plants that helps in dense growth of plants, but are easier to grow.
Ornamental Everywhere Everytime.
Besides the herbal/medical instincts, Salvia officinalis is an ornamental plant throughout the year irrespective of the place it is grown-up which may include herb garden or flower beds. The shrubbery is fine and wonderful for the entire year with its blue and purple coloured flower can be used for a nice bordering. It even smiles in the season when other flowering plants in the flower bed need to be cut down.
For decoration purpose or garden design one can use combination of the 1000 species of the Garden Sage. Popular varieties like purple colour leaves, the famous TRICOLOR species (that has a greyish leaves with irregular cream border), the multicoloured plants besides the default grey-green shrubbery. They all look brilliant and beautiful in the garden.
Medicinal and Dietary Prospects
The Garden sage leaves have usages varying geographically across the world with Middle Eastern and Mediterranean people using them with salads while in Europe and North America they are used as a flavour in gravies, meat and others.
Tips to use sage leaves in salads - Add some fresh sage leaves in a plate decorated with sliced cheese, sliced tomato, a drop of lemon juice (and Olive oil) and little bit of salt and pepper. Also remove the leaves before it makes the salad too bitter and it is instructed to remove after 20 minutes.
Garden Sage is even thought as a plant with more than the researched medicinal values; as the oil contained in the leaves of plant has antiseptic properties and to get these benefits, we need to immerse these leaves in a boiling pot of tea for 10 minutes and then apply on our body. Many of its claimed medicinal properties have not yet been proved.
Virtual Pesticide
Salvia Officinalis attract bees to gather honey from its flower and it repels pest insects from its nearby areas thus keeping the garden free from diseases and pathogenic insects. Also people don’t like to grow sages in their garden fearing a bee attack; but we know they help in pollination keeping the garden at its best and don’t harm if we don’t mess with them. So always it is a preferred idea to border the garden or plants with the Garden Sages so that the pests and insects are fend off and the beauty prevails as well due to the great flowers it bores.
It is almost impossible to grow in hot humid climates US Zone 9+
When cooking with it dry-fry it first or fry with a little oil for a less medicinal flavour.
It does help the digestion of fat.
A tea of sage is good for sore throats only a 4″ sprig is needed.
Hai I’m ery. I’m still learning in architecture and landscaping school. Thanks for the information. It gives me a resource to my school task
We have a decent size herb garden in the back yard, but have had only medium success with sage. One of the cool thinkgs about an herb garden like this is tasting fresh herbs. While tasting different varieties of basil is great, I must agree that we find sage a bit too bitter some times. Still sage is an awesome herb to add distinctive flavors to tons of recipes
Interesting article. Did not know about such grass. It is a pity, that she does not grow at us…