Sage Common

The definitive culinary workhorse of a cottage garden. A dense evergreen mound of thick pebbly silver-grey leaves, heavy with aromatic oil, and the essential herb for a Sunday roast, a proper stuffing or a herb butter.

Being evergreen is what makes it valuable. While the annual herbs are long gone, sage carries on giving you fresh grey-green leaves through the winter, and it puts up spikes of mauve-blue flowers in early summer that the bees work steadily.

Its one real enemy is winter wet rather than winter cold. On heavy clay, add grit or grow it in a raised bed or a terracotta pot. When pruning, cut into green growth only — sage does not reliably regenerate from old brown wood.