Most gardeners love having birds and wildlife visit their backyard gardens. The one bird that is most gardeners favorite is the beautiful little hummingbird. Gardeners around the world will either make their gardens specific to attracting these little guys or will add a few features to their existing gardens to create a wonderful space that the hummingbirds will visit time and time again.

How to Create a Beautiful Hummingbird Garden

We all know that hanging a sugar-water filled hummingbird feeder is a sure-fire way of getting these small birds to your patio or yard. What’s even better though is planting flowers and plants that the hummingbirds can draw nectar from or find shelter in from predators. In order to create a beautiful hummingbird garden, you just have to follow a few simple steps: Plant what they love, provide them their favorite place to nap and to hide from predators, and give them a clean water source.

On a side note, I want to share a book that can give you, even more, info about hummingbirds and how to attract them.

The Hummingbird Book: The Complete Guide to Attracting, Identifying, and Enjoying Hummingbirds

Hummingbird Food

Hummingbirds love to drink nectar from long tubular flowers like those found on Delphiniums or Foxgloves. They also are happy when you plant Columbine, Hollyhocks, Lantana, Salvia, Butterfly Bush, Trumpet Vine, Honeysuckle, Phlox, Lupine, Fuscia, Lobelia, Agapanthus, and Penstemons. If you are in the southwest, hummingbirds love the flowers on both Barrel and Saguaro Cacti. Hummingbirds rely on these flowers for their nectar which gives them the energy they need to flap their wings so fast for so long, and they also eat small insects and spiders for the protein.

Hummingbird Shelter

After they have spent the majority of the day eating, they need a safe place to rest. Hummingbirds will search out a place in your garden to perch during the day and sleep at night. They prefer trees or large shrubs that they can call home that have a good cover to hide them. They tend to build little nests to sleep in and raise their young. Females nest and care for their young during their 5-7 weeks of brooding, and when there are nesting materials in your garden, they are more often to create their home in your garden. Hummingbirds are not cavity nesters so don’t use birdhouses, but enjoy nestling under soft material in their tree nests.

Hummingbird Water

Hummingbirds get sticky quite quickly with all the nectar that they consume and tend to bathe regularly. They prefer shallow moving water such as what is found in a fountain over deep stagnant water like what is found in a bucket. If there is a spray mist from a sprinkler, you might just see a hummingbird playing in it. A water fountain or a water feature in your yard is a great source of clean water for bathing and drinking and is essential in creating a hummingbird garden.

To create a beautiful hummingbird garden, provide the little fellows with flowers to drink from, trees to rest in, and water to bathe and drink from. If you do these three steps, you will have hummingbirds visiting your garden all year long.