![Augusta in May
Augusta Duelberg Salvia image](https://txmg.org/hendersonmg/files/2024/06/2024-05-27-Augusta-in-May-683x1024.jpeg)
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by Lydia Holley May 27, 2024
Henry Duelberg salvia is a favorite among Texas gardeners because it is a Texas native, blooms profusely, attracts butterflies, is drought tolerant, deer resistant, and reliably returns. It has a purple bloom. Augusta Duelberg salvia is just as tough and attracts just as many butterflies, but this variety has bridal-white blooms and sage-green foliage.
Many already know the story of how Greg Grant found these salvias blooming alongside the gravestone of Henry and Augusta Duelberg. Tested for its performance and reliability in every Texas ecoregion, Henry Duelberg salvia has been named a Texas Superstar® plant.
Henry Duelberg salvia is more commonly found than Augusta Duelberg. But Augusta Duelberg is well worth finding. Because the blooms are white, they will go with any color scheme. The gray tone of the plant’s leaves can be paired with a number of gray-foliaged plants if you wish to emphasize that feature. Or, if you have no room for Augusta Duelberg salvia in your garden, it will grow just as well in containers.
Master Gardener Judy Haldeman recommends deadheading Augusta Duelberg salvia to encourage fresh blooms to form. When doing so, she recommends cutting the plant back only a few inches, to its first set of leaves. That may be the only maintenance this plant needs.
Grant has stated he looks for plants which are in remote locations, uncared for by a team of landscapers. These plants are not fussy and are generally easy for anyone to grow. As Grant states, “If the dead can grow it, you can too.”
I was just as curious about the people whose names grace these plants as the plants themselves. Find-a-Grave shows a photo of their headstone in LaGrange, Texas. Henry was born in 1854 and died in 1935 at the age of 80. Augusta, his wife, was born three years after Henry, in 1857. She died at the age of 46, in 1903.
During their lifetime, Henry and Augusta had four children—three sons and one daughter. They, too, have all passed. What I loved the most was the photo of the headstone on the website. It is surrounded by the beautiful blooms named after them. Though grave markers give no indication of the life these people lived, I can imagine in that time and place, they needed to be just as tough as these salvias. I hope they also believed their life was beautiful, as lovely as the flowers circling their final resting place.
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