Life After Lawn: This sage makes bees happy

This is one part in a weekly series featuring the UC Davis Arboretum’s “Life After Lawn” series – 45 can’t-fail, easy-care, low-water plants well adapted to our region and ideal for drought-tolerant landscapes.

Bee’s Bliss purple sage

Salvia “Bee’s Bliss”

Size: Up to 2 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet wide.

Bloom season: Lavender blue whorls of flowers in spring.

Exposure: Full sun.

Pruning needs: Tip prune when young to encourage bushy growth.

Water needs: Low water; once established, this shrub requires only a few deep irrigations in summer.

Snapshot: Want to make bees buzz with delight? Plant this pretty sage. Bee’s Bliss purple sage is a California native hybrid that offers a lot of bloom with little water. A low-growing, heat- and drought-tolerant salvia, Bee’s Bliss features gray-green foliage and profuse lavender blue flowers in spring. These blooms attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds – but not deer. Bee’s Bliss is a good choice for slopes or to spill over edges of retaining walls. Tough and long-lived, it needs little irrigation in summer.

For more on “Life After Lawn,” click on arboretum.ucdavis.edu.

This story was originally published March 18, 2016 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Life After Lawn: This sage makes bees happy."