Feed The Hummers All Winter

  It's easy to keep hummingbirds happy in the summer - it only takes a few lobelia, fuchsias, agastache, sage, or honeysuckle to have hummingbirds whirring madly around your garden. But it's now, in the bleakness of winter, that our native overwintering Anna's hummingbirds need help finding sustenance. 

Nix that sticky red sugar syrup and beautify your garden with winter-blooming plants beloved by hummers. Indian Plum and salmonberry are native plants that bloom in the first months of the year. Starting early in January, winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) brightens the garden while nourishing hummingbirds. The bold evergreen foliage of Mahonia x media 'Arthur Menzies' is topped with huge racemes of fragrant yellow flowers this month. When the mahonia flowers fade, winter flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) flowers through March. By that time, bleeding hearts, columbines, snowberry and elderberry are beginning to flower to carry the hummingbirds into spring.

Mahonia

 

Winter jasmine and red flowering currant

Comments

[Cyndy]

Oh my - you have hummingbirds all year! And things blooming all year! Heaven...

[flowers Philippines]

Ohh you make my heart sing every time i see flowers like this.

~Ashley

[Hummingbird Feeders]

Thanks for pointing out that some hummers are around all year or at least later and earlier that most think about. Great info. Thanks for sharing.

[Gifts to Pakistan]

Really beautiful flowers. Somebody has very well said that Hummingbird sits on those flowers that are beautiful.