Cover crops for dormant vegetable beds: clover, hairy vetch, elbon (cereal) rye, Austrian winter peas, or annual rye.Perennials, shrubs, ornamental (clumping) grasses.Watch Andrea DeLong-Amaya’s interview to learn more! In ditches, wet lands or other hydrated soil, Aquatic milkweed ( Asclepias perennis) provides nectar to hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. To cover a fence or trellis, spring and sometimes fall-blooming native crossvine ( Bignonia capreolata), including hybrid ‘Tangerine Dream’, shouts for attention. Summer through fall, shrubby perennial flame acanthus doesn’t need much water to pump out flaming flowers.Įvergreen penstemon rosettes shoot up panicles of tiny tubular blooms in spring. Super drought tough Turk’s cap adapts to part sun and dappled shade, blooming spring through frost.Īlthough small-sized, deep red Heartleaf hibiscus ( Hibiscus martianus) flags down hummingbirds on the hunt. coccinea fills the void until the first hard frost. When Salvia farinacea and greggi rest in summer, annual warm weather S. Salvia greggii is an evergreen that benefits from hard shearing in January/February and light pruning in May and late August.

These herbaceous plants die to the ground in winter but return as rosettes in the spring. Salvia farinacea ‘Henry Duelberg’ is a recent hybrid. Providing on-going food is essential, not just for hummingbirds, but for everyone on the wing. To get your garden on the hummingbird radar, this week Andrea DeLong-Amaya from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center spotlights a few garden groceries. If we deadhead in late spring and rain favors us a bit, we’ll even get summer blooms. After a sensational spring cycle, it starts all over again in fall. That’s a great thing about native rock rose ( Pavonia lasiopetala), too. It hasn’t taken a break since early last spring, a coral beacon for insects and migratory hummingbirds heading in or heading back out. You can’t beat my neighbor’s aloe for the longest blooming plant around.

Hummingbird flowers