However, another thing I didn't realise is that it may not be hardy. Recently I've seen a couple of articles suggesting it as a conservatory plant, so I'm a bit concerned I'm just going to kill it off if I leave it in the garden. I'm in suburban London and I'm uphill, so I'm not in a frost pocket. In terms of the normal frost conditions here, I find that it kills off my nasturtiums but the flowers on my fatsia japonica never drop off (I remember someone else on here saying that the latter was a frost indicator for them). So the frosts here aren't that bad, but it's not as mild as a south coast location.

Does anyone else grow this plant? If so, you find the need to protect it in winter? I've got an unheated greenhouse and I suppose I could pot it up and put it in there, or else I could cover with fleece.

If you were really keen you could overwinter it under a few layers of fleece or mulch - though that would kill the top growth. I don't fancy its chances if you dig it up and pot it right at the beginning of winter. They're quite awkward to manage, really.

I fell in love with S. leucantha at first sight, pretty, furry, silvery, lilac thing that it is, but it was a short-lived romance!

That said, I have several Salvias in my garden that are still flowering now (or rather reblooming, having been assiduously dead-headed after their first flowering in early summer). They include the widely grown Salvia sylvestris "May Night" and "East Friesland", which I know are supposed to be hardy. I cannot say so from personal experience, as this is only my second summer in this garden (although they did survive a long, cold, dry winter as baby plants). In my old garden I kept Salvia verticillata "Purple Rain" coming back for the best part of a decade before I left.

I am concerned about garden nerd's loss of Salvia uliginosa, as I bought some plants this summer which have been growing and flowering in a large pot, ready for planting out as soon as they finish. I guess I shall have to give them a good mulch.

To judge from lori londonuk's post, we garden in fairly similar conditions (I am half way up a hill in suburban north London), so we should have similar degrees of success in bringing tender plants through the winter.

Salvia uglinosa (:)) shouldn't be killed by the cold anywhere in the UK. It is completely hardy in Virginia (USA) in temperatures down to below -20C. But despite being called Bog Sage, it doesn't want to sit in waterlogged clay all winter.

I have also realised that the S. leucantha is still there, poking its little purple furry head out from behind a dustbin. Most of the salvias only seem to get going just before the frost polishes them off, which is partly why I lost interest. The best one was pineapple sage and that died in mysterious circumstances this spring, sob. Anyone got a cutting they would swap?

Take a cutting of it to keep in the greenhouse to overwinter, then you don't have to worry if your outdoor ones peg it.