Grow a Hummingbird Garden!

Feel Free to Share!

I enjoy a lot of hummingbirds visiting or living around my home. You can too. It is so easy to grow flowers and plants that bring hummingbirds. So what flowers attract hummingbirds?

Do you love hummingbirds? If so, you will want to learn how to grow a garden that attracts them! Hummingbirds are beautiful creatures and they add a lot of excitement to any garden.

In this blog post, we will discuss the best plants and flowers that attract hummingbirds and provide some tips on how to make your garden as hard to resist as possible for these little birds.

Let’s get started! The flowers listed here are ones that I have observed each year that seem to be most attractive to the hummingbirds around my home.

One thing is important, start with early blooming plants they love.  The hummingbirds, whether they live near year-round or are migrating will want to eat early in the season. 

If you don’t feed them someone else will and that is where they will go.

Flowers that Attract Hummingbirds

Make sure to include native flowering plants, vines, shrubs, and trees. Native plants provide much more nectar than hybrids and exotics.

Grow native plants like trumpet honeysuckle, bee balm, and hummingbird sage.

The Audubon Society has a great page where you can find what plants are native to your area.

Bold, vivid flowers that are tubular hold the most nectar and are extremely attractive to hummingbirds.

Many know that hummingbirds are very attracted to flowers in the red color spectrum but did you know they are just as attracted to blue?

Garden Plans for Hummingbirds

A good hummingbird garden plan will include flowers and plants that bloom early. So what can you plant that will have early blooms? 

I have hummingbirds that overwinter and I keep a feeder up year-round for them but they love to come and sip on early-blooming flowers too.

This goes along with the idea of planting your garden for continuous color.

Many of these flowers bloom for a few weeks then go to seed and then other flowers come into bloom.

Lupine is a hummingbird favorite in early Spring along with Iris.

I also keep pots of Pansies and Violas on my back deck. Once the temps rise I move them to a partially shaded spot and they will continue to bloom through the summer.

The best is morning sun and afternoon shade. Many violas will also reseed for you.

Peonies are a beautiful perennial that is not only easy to grow but the hummingbirds love them.

Planting peonies isn’t hard and you are rewarded every single Spring with luscious blooms.

Irises are another perennial that returns each spring and are so easy to grow. They are particularly popular with the hummingbirds in my area.

The wide range of Iris colors is nothing short of spectacular!

Foxgloves are a biennial or perennial that return to the garden year after year making an easy treat and usually they start to bloom just before the Lupine and Iris are beginning to fade.  (many tubular-shaped flowers hold lots of nectar that hummingbirds love.

Foxgloves reseed themselves readily making for a super easy one to grow.

More early blooming flowers easy to grow are:
Sweet Williams
Lilacs
Columbine
Nicotiana

One thing that is very important is to plant masses of flowers of one variety or color.

Even potted plants grouped together create a bright and powerful visual attraction to hungry hummingbirds that may be flying far above.

Mid Bloomers

Hummingbirds love red colors like this container of Petunias. (buckets and tubs of flowers)

Million Bells aka Calibrachoa are much like petunias and are much more cold-hardy.

The hummingbirds in my area have especially enjoyed the Larkspur. They seem to fly for it before many other flowers.

Larkspur is very easy to grow from seed using the Winter Sowing method or spread the seeds in Fall.

Keep Larkspur dead-headed so they continue to bloom.

A close cousin of the Larkspur are Delphiniums.

And the Bee Balm aka Monarda is definitely a favorite in midsummer.

My trumpet vine is just starting to bloom now in mid-July and it is a hummingbird magnet like no other but many varieties can be pesky and invasive.

I have mine in a wine barrel and so far it has been well behaved, I do cut it back to about 12 inches in late Fall to keep it in check.

Liatris or Gayfeather is very popular too and it comes back each year.  I bought a bag of corms for these at Costco a couple of years ago.

Later blooming plants

Salvias, hyssop, also known as Agastache, Morning glories, and Cleome start to bloom later in the season.

Some Salvias and Agastache are perennial while others will be grown as annuals.

There is perennial morning glory as well but we are most familiar with the annual type. This selection at Botanical Interests has several colors in one packet.

Please note that Morning Glories are considered invasive in some areas so be sure to check before planting.

Butterfly Bush is extremely popular with hummingbirds. Not only do they provide nectar but they also make great places for them to perch.

A great selection of flowers you can grow from seeds that Hummingbirds love is in this collection from Botanical Interests called Bee Happy.

So not only is it great for attracting hummingbirds but it is beneficial for bees too!

Another bonus is most of these are also very attractive to Butterflies.

Container plants Hummingbirds enjoy

Most of the flowers listed so far will grow great in containers. If you only have a patio or teeny garden I would go with bright ivy geraniums, calibrachoa, petunias, and lobelias in baskets or hanging pots along with a feeder close by.

Hummingbird Feeders

A hummingbird feeder is also a great thing to include in the garden.

Use feeders that are easy to clean and change out the sugar solution every 3 days. Fresh sugar water and clean feeders are essential to helping keep hummingbirds healthy.

The correct solution to use in feeders is 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. So to 1/4 cup sugar, use 1 cup of water.

This is the optimum mix for hummingbird health according to studies. Adding more sugar is not good as it makes for a thicker solution that is harder for them to uptake.

Hummingbirds like to live in warm climates and they prefer gardens that have a lot of trees and shrubs. They also enjoy being near water sources, such as ponds or fountains.

A water feature that Hummingbirds love is a fountain they can enjoy, CLICK here for my DIY Solar Hummingbird fountain that my hummers LOVE!

Healthy Garden Healthy Hummingbirds

Eliminate pesticide use in your garden. Spiders and insects (arthropods) are an important part of an adult hummingbird’s diet, and young hummingbirds still in the nest are almost exclusively fed arthropods.

Adding compost to your garden beds helps to fertilize the plants and protect the soil by attracting beneficial insect life that hummingbirds feed on.

Compost also adds a significant amount of nutrients to the earth, which encourages plant growth and produces more flowers for a generous nectar source.

Do you have a flower or plant that the hummingbirds seem to flock to?

Happy Gardening!

Feel Free to Share!