Salvia leucantha 'Midnight'

Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' is the all-purple form of the Mexican bush sage, and the difference is worth seeing. Where the common kind carries small white corollas against purple calyces, 'Midnight' drops the white altogether, so the long arching spikes read as pure, saturated purple from calyx to flower, a deeper and more solid color that carries even further across an autumn garden.

In every other way the selection keeps the virtues of the species: a rounded, shrubby mound of arching stems, narrow gray-green leaves that are white-woolly beneath and softly aromatic when brushed, and the same silvered, felted texture that looks good long before the flowers arrive. Native to the highlands of Mexico, the Mexican bush sage is built for heat and sun.

The flowers pour out from late summer through the first frost, a long and generous run of lavender-purple that draws hummingbirds fueling for migration along with bees and butterflies. The velvety, fragrant foliage is left alone by deer and shrugs off most pests and diseases, so the plant asks little once settled.

Site 'Midnight' in full sun in well-drained soil, at the back or middle of a border, in a pollinator bed, or in a large container, and let the solid purple spikes play against warm-season grasses, asters, and the golds of fall. The spikes cut and dry well for arrangements. In zone 8 and warmer the plant returns from the root each spring; farther north it makes a fast, showy annual. Cut the old growth down in late winter.