Pollinator plants and hummingbird attractors

Mon. May. 16, 2022

Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Pollinator plants and hummingbird attractors

Planting to attract all kinds of pollinators and hummingbirds too!  I have native plants scattered all over my landscape, in particular my butterfly garden and rain garden.

I was looking for a short ‘filler’ plant… 1st year after road construction and plants were replanted in spring 2021

But –  I also enjoy  new cultivars, so don’t be afraid to plant them. The one thing we have to understand is that there is almost always a trade-off of some sort.  Maybe that rose color is spectacular, but it has lost some of its fragrance. Or perhaps you get a disease resistant tomato that lacks that full flavor of an heirloom.

My baptisia last year with bumblebees – this is a cultivar named ‘Prairie Blues’

That said, there are still some great choices to attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden with natives and non-natives alike. 

Honeysuckle vine ‘dropmore scarlet’ June 2018 – I trimmed it back in 2019 and it’s still huge

One native that pollinators love is Purple Prairie Clover as well as Butterfly weed and Asters.

Asters with Karl Foerester grass and a bumblebee!

For hummingbirds, they love the color red. Petunias and fuchsias are high on the list. So is salvia.

Hummers really like tubular shaped flowers. For another annual consider cuphea. Cardinal flowers are gorgeous in the raingarden.  They like their soil damp. 

And Cardinal flowers to the right and in front

Columbine, in particular the Native yellow and red, Aquilegia canadensis, will also attract those little jewels to the garden. They handle full sun to shade and sandy/loam soils.  And they’re deer resistant!

Native columbine

This is a more comprehensive list of pollinator friendly plants: Of Plants and Pollinators – Teri Knight (1)