GARDENING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE IN THE NORTHEAST

Hummingbird Favorites

Hummingbirds usually don’t come to mind when thinking about woodland animal species. We tend to associate these tiny acrobats with flowering meadows rather than a woodland garden. But in fact in a woodland garden they will readily find all of their basic needs such as food (nectar) and perching and nesting sites in the nearby shrubs and trees. If you build a woodland garden with the appropriate plants, Hummingbirds will find it and regard it as their own.

Whereas the western USA is home to several hummingbird species, only one is native to the east. The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird arrives at our New York latitudes every year around May and spends the warm months feeding and breeding here, before migrating back to Central America for the winter.

We have been attracting these tiny birds with sugar water to our house for several years, but now, with the woodland garden much improved, they visit the entire season without us supplementing their diet artificially. Hummingbird watching in the garden has become one of our favorite pastimes.

Hummingbirds rely mostly on plants with deep trumpet-shaped flowers for nectar. They are especially attracted to bright red, but will also visit appropriate flowers of other colors when hungry. For example when the closely-related Cardinal Flower and Great Blue Lobelia grow next to each other, the Hummingbird usually prefers the Cardinal Flower but visits the Great Blue Lobelia occasionally.

Over the years we have identified the woodland plants the hummingbirds prefer in our garden. We strive to have at least one of these hummingbird favorite flowers in bloom all summer long so that the tiny bird will have a continuous food supply.

If a hummingbird really loves “its” flower, it will defend it against other hummingbirds, butterflies and even well-meaning humans by charging and generating a characteristic deep hum with their wings. It’s quite a thrill, experiencing this magical encounter for the first time!

A fun way to watch hummingbirds on a hot summer day is under a sprinkler, where they love to wash and cool off.

Giant Solomon’s Seal

The arrival of the first Ruby-Throated Hummingbird each year in our garden has been closely associated with the bloom time of two species of flowering plants: Giant Solomon’s Seal and Eastern Red Columbine.

Giant Solomon’s Seal is one of several native Solomon’s Seal Species. The big dangling bell-shaped flowers make it’s nectar easily accessible to hummingbirds. The flowers are white, but at this early time of the year red flowers are in short supply, and the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird cannot be as picky with colors as later in the year. We have found Giant Solomon’s Seal to be a vigorous grower and very easy to propagate by digging up a clump and dividing the rootstock. We have them growing close to the house so we can conveniently observe the first hummingbirds from the warm indoors.

Eastern Red Columbine

Eastern Red Columbine is not really a woodland plant, but it does fairly well in part-shade at the forest edge. Columbines behave as short-lived perennials, and it is necessary to let them go to seed in order to ensure they stick around over the years. We also supplement their numbers by winter-sowing either our own collected or a packet of ordered columbine seed every year. They usually grow readily in available space between other plants.

Trumpet Honeysuckle

Trumpet Honeysuckle is a fantastic native vine blooming profusely for a very long time in late spring early summer. There are several excellent cultivars. We have varieties ‘John Clayton’ (yellow) and ‘Major Wheeler’ (red) growing over a pergola. The hummingbirds visit both with a slight preference for the red. American Robins have been building their nests in this dense tangle of vines as well.

Scarlet Beebalm

Next in the sequence of bloomers attractive to hummingbirds are the beebalms, especially the red Monarda Didyma ‘Jacob Cline’ (Scarlet Beebalm). Like the Trumpet Honeysuckles they bloom for a long time and are quite the hummingbird magnets in July. Scarlet Beebalm likes a bit more sun than your average woodland plant, so we put it at the sunniest spot we have with about 4-6 hours of sun.

Jewelweed

Jewelweed is not the plant people typically welcome in their garden. They are annuals and tend to self-sow a bit too prolifically. Jewelweed is growing along the Sleepy Hollow roadsides, and they self-sow in our woodland as well. We used to regard them as weeds and pull them out. After seeing the hummingbirds visiting their small orange flowers, and learning that Jewelweed is a native plant that can actually help reduce the pressure from exotic invaders like garlic mustard, we switched to managing them instead, by allowing for limited self-sowing where appropriate.

Hummingbird visiting Jewelweed

Zinnia

When we first built our mixed wildflower meadow, Zinnia (which is not native to the NorthEast, but a well-behaved annual) stole the show in the first year. Their bloom was just spectacular and the hummingbirds and butterflies simply loved these flowers. After the first year however, Zinnias could not compete with the perennials. They need bare soil to thrive and must be re-seeded yearly in order to have a continuous supply. We now just scatter seed here and there close to the house in more sunny spots. Lately we are running out of good spots for these because our newly planted shrubs and understory trees are doing what they are designed to: give light shade to the woodland perennials.

Turkscap Lily

Now here is the real stunner: Turkscap Lily! This is a native Lily growing from a huge bulb. The plant literally shoots out of the ground in spring, reaching 8 feet in our garden by August. Also in August on the order of 20 flowers per plant, each 2-3 inches large open up in a really unique way, where the petals are bending backwards. We have seen Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies feeding on these flowers for hours until the yellow Butterflies were painted entirely in the brown pollen. Hummingbirds visit the flowers as well, albeit not as frequently as the Swallowtails.

Turkscap Lily likes to grow under shrubs where the first growth spurt on the order of 3-4 feet happens in the shade and the stem and flowers finally tower over the shrub layer. The plant propagates nicely by producing bulblets. The only problem Turkscap Lily experiences in our garden is an onslaught of bright red Lily Leaf Beetles. These exotic beetles multiply in a very short time and can completely defoliate and kill native lilies. We have learned to recognize the black larvae of the Lily Leaf Beetle on the underside of slightly nibbled leaves, and simply pick the damaged leaves with the larvae by hand. The adults are not camouflaged at all and can be picked by hand with some experience. (They like to drop off the plant as a defensive mechanism, so open your other hand to catch them just in case).

Great Blue Lobelia

The two essential plants to extend the food supply for our little hummers into fall are Cardinal Flower and Great Blue Lobelia. Both like to grow in wet areas of the woodland garden. These are short-lived perennials, that seed out prolifically. We usually collect seed late in the season and scatter them where we would like more. Young plants can also be easily transplanted.

Great Blue Lobelia is the slightly shorter of the two, and maybe a little bit more bushy. Aside from this and the color, they are really very similar.

Cardinal Flower

Cardinal Flower is probably the hummingbirds’ most loved treat in late summer/early fall, during which they load up for their long-distance track back to their winter quarters in Latin America. We have them growing all over in low spots. Several cultivars with darker foliage are available at nurseries and native plant sales. The most economical way to grow both Cardinal Flower and Great Blue Lobelia is from seed.