The salvia wall at Kew in October
For a moment I thought it was a kingfisher. Then, as I looked up from my breakfast, I saw that the streak of piercing blue was the incredibly dilatory Salvia vitifolia opening its flowers, not exactly kingfisher colour, but sharing that startling brilliance, along with gentians, the windows at Chartres, one or two delphiniums perhaps, but little else.
Breakfast turned surreal when I saw, just beyond the salvias, of all things, a heron, right beside the diminutive tank that holds Halley and Haley, our two Comets. The heron hopped onto a table for a better look, then up to the greenhouse roof. I must have made a noise as I scrambled for my camera because he then shrugged his wings and hopped off over the garden wall. What incredible eyesight herons must have to catch the reflection on a tiny patch of water as they cruise by. Have they fished out the Round Pond and the Serpentine? I’ve put bamboos over the Comets in their tank, just in case.
But salvias. How long they can wait before flowering. At Kew this week the Great Borders have gone quiet, with Anemone japonica and Aster ‘Mönch’ performing almost alone among the bleached grasses. The star turn of the season is the long south wall above the Rock Garden, perhaps a hundred yards long and ten feet high, almost hidden in a tidal wave of salvias. Purple and pink and dusky red are dominant; labels are hard to find in the profusion of admittedly not very interesting foliage.
I recognize the now almost ubiquitous S. guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’, waving its terminal blobs of flowers even higher than the wall, S.involucrata halfway up, lingerie pink, S.leucantha purple and grey, S. patens the secret searing blue and S.canaliculata a miniature of the same. Long thin scarlet spikes of what I suppose is S. coccinea (but these have rusty indumentum-backed leaves and stems), are the most eye-catching, but the whole generous jumble, in the low afternoon sun, is a spectacle worth waiting for.
