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Salvia 'Allen Chickering' (Allen Chickering Sage) - A dense shrub that grows to 5 feet tall with an equal or greater spread. Leaves are gray-green and approximately 1 inch long. The 2-foot-long flower spikes of deep lavender flowers form on a tier of whorls in late spring and summer.
For its best appearance this plant requires full sun, well-draining soil and only occasional summer watering and once established it requires even less watering. This cultivar is frost hardy to about 15° F. As with other native sages, to keep a dense and more attractive plant it is best to cut back in the winter by about a third or more when young - once mature with woody stems, only tip prune.
Salvia 'Allen Chickering' was the first cultivar selected at The California Botanic Garden (formally called Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden). The first plant so named was discovered in 1937 by the chair of the garden's trustees, Allen Chickering, who reportedly found a hybrid between the Blue Sage, Salvia clevelandii and the Purple Sage, Salvia leucophylla, while on a morning walk in the botanic garden. Though this first plant was never propagated or introduced, a later nearly identical plant was selected in 1949 and released in 1955 as Salvia 'Allen Chickering'.
Allen Lawrence Chickering (1877-1958) was a San Francico based lawyer and industrialist and was a long time trustee of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. He was a childhood friend of Susana Bixby Bryant, who first established Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden at its original on Bixby property in Yorba Linda location and Chickering was the garden's president when the garden was moved to its present location in Claremont after she passed away in 1950. That this durable old California native cultivar is still in the trade today speaks to its attractiveness and durability.
This information about Salvia 'Allen Chickering' displayed is based on research conducted in our horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also will relate observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we receive from others and we welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share any cultural information that would aid others in growing it.
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