“Mommy, come see! There are fairies in the garden!”

And so they might have been to the eyes of a five year old who grew up on tales of pixies, elves and fairies. The magical visitor this time, though, was a ruby-throated hummingbird. Hummingbirds have a unique ability to hover in one place by rapidly fluttering their tiny wings which may truly have made them the ‘fairies’ that many people saw hovering around brightly colored flowers.

It’s not difficult to create a garden that will attract hummingbirds, but if you’d like to build a habitat in which they will happily nest and live throughout the northern summer, you need to provide them with more than a sugar-water feeder and a plant or two. An active hummingbird garden doesn’t need to be large, but it will have all of the following key ingredients to attract and keep the attention of nature’s fairies.

Choose nectar producing plants that bloom at different times throughout the spring, summer and autumn.

Flowers are, of course, the key ingredient in attracting hummingbirds to your garden. The tiny birds feed on nectar that is produced by flowers, and seem particularly attracted to plants with trumpet or tubular bright red and orange flowers. Among their particular favorites, though, are rhododendrons, azaleas and rose of Sharon bushes, so the red trumpet isn’t a hard and fast rule. For northern gardens that attract the ruby-throated hummingbird, choose from the list of plants below, making sure that you choose plants that flower at different times during the blooming season to provide food for them throughout the spring, summer and fall.

Spring Bloomers
Azaleas, rhododendrons and rose of Sharon bushes make a great ‘background’ for hummingbird gardens. They bloom early in the spring and continue blooming through the early summer. Pink and bright red varieties are favored, but hummingbirds love ALL rose of Sharon varieties.

Summer Bloomers
Bleeding hearts and red mountain columbine bloom in the early summer, as do petunias, morning glories, trumpet vines, trumpet honeysuckle, and impatiens, all of which attract hummingbirds. An expanse of shade-dappled impatiens is a powerful attraction for hummingbirds, who are ‘sight’ hunters, finding their feeding grounds by sight.

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