Most Salvia nemerosas look pretty ratty after they've bloomed. Trimming off the spent flower stalks is good. Hiding thme behnd something else that blooms later is good, too. I don't have the problem in my dry garden, but it sounds like slugs may be eating the foliage.

I like May Night salvia, but have to admit that the foliage is nothing to write home about. Thankfully, mine bloom pretty much non-stop. The blooms are great, really like the color.

East Friesland salvia has much better looking foliage to me, although it sometimes flops over. I can tolerate the flopping in order to have the better foliage ... so East Friesland is my favorite salvia. Hard to beat those blooms on May Night though.

Randy

I just popped in over here and saw this post....I had a similar problem in previous years with mine and even earlier in the season it was a mess. Most of our problem was slugs and I put stuff down for that and it's looking a lot better. Right now I have to say it's looking pretty good! I keep cutting back the dead flowers and it's on like it's 4th bloom now. I just love how it lasts forever!

How far back on the stem do you cut the dead flowers off to? I tried that this year and hardly got any rebloom at all. My foliage also looked pretty ratty this year. I don't think we have slugs, but we have grasshoppers galore.