Salvia

A Mediterranean evergreen subshrub with gray-green velvety foliage + lavender summer flowers. Among the most useful kitchen herbs + a strong nectar source for honey bees, native bumblebees, and solitary bees. Perennial in zones 4a-8b; longer-lived in well-drained alkaline soils.

A clump-forming herbaceous perennial in the mint family (Lamiaceae), native to Europe and west-central Asia. NC State Extension describes an erect, multi-stemmed plant about 1.5-3 feet tall and up to 2 feet wide, with wrinkled, toothed, gray-green aromatic leaves and dense spike-like clusters of lavender to violet-blue flowers (some cultivars pink) from June to September. It blooms in flushes — cutting spent stems back to the basal leaves brings a fresh round of flowers — and is drought tolerant, deer- and rabbit-resistant, and a magnet for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. A reliable, low-maintenance workhorse for sunny borders and pollinator plantings.

A Mediterranean-native evergreen aromatic woody subshrub long known as Rosmarinus officinalis (reclassified to Salvia rosmarinus in 2017 based on molecular phylogenetics). Highly drought-tolerant once established; pale-blue spring flowers; foliage harvested year-round in mild climates as the canonical Mediterranean culinary herb. Borderline-hardy in zones below 7 — overwintered indoors or treated as annual outside zones 8-10.

A woody-based mint-family perennial from the dry hills and grasslands of southwest-to-central Asia, grown for its haze of small two-lipped lavender-blue flowers tiered in branched terminal panicles above finely-dissected, aromatic gray-green foliage on stiff, square stems. It blooms from midsummer into autumn, shrugs off heat, drought, and poor soils, and is recognized for tolerating rabbits, deer, and urban conditions. Formerly classified as Perovskia atriplicifolia and not native to North America.