Salvias have become very popular over recent years, but Salvia patens, the Gentian sage, has been used in British gardens for the past two centuries. The great Victorian gardener William Robinson wrote in his book, The English Flower Garden, that ‘It is one of the best plants in cultivation, the intense blue of its flowers making it a charming object. Though tender in most gardens, the tuberous roots are easily wintered in a frost-proof place’.