Attracting hummingbirds to your outdoor space offers moments of brilliant color and astonishing speed. For those with limited area, container gardening provides an effective solution to create a concentrated source of their preferred food. Understanding the specific floral features these birds seek allows you to transform a balcony or patio into a reliable aerial café. Strategic plant selection and careful maintenance ensure a steady supply of the high-energy nectar hummingbirds require.
Understanding Nectar and Floral Preference
Hummingbirds select flowers based on criteria that maximize their energy intake. The most recognized feature is the tubular or trumpet-shaped bloom, which perfectly accommodates their long bills and specialized tongues. This shape often restricts access for larger insects, reducing competition for the nectar.
The birds are primarily drawn to flowers producing nectar with a high sugar concentration, often selecting quality over quantity. They possess acute color vision, helping them locate flowers in the warm color spectrum, such as red, orange, and deep pink. Unlike many insect pollinators, hummingbirds do not rely on scent, making bright visual cues important for navigation.
Recommended Potted Flowers
Several annual and perennial plants thrive in containers while offering the high-quality nectar hummingbirds seek.
- The Cigar Plant (Cuphea ignea) is a superb choice, featuring numerous thin, tubular, reddish-orange flowers that are a perfect fit for a hummingbird’s bill. It prefers full sun but tolerates light afternoon shade, and its continuous bloom cycle provides a constant food source.
- Fuchsias, particularly trailing varieties, are excellent for hanging baskets, as their pendulous blooms allow hummingbirds to easily hover and feed. Many varieties offer reddish-pink and purple flowers and perform best in partial shade during the hottest part of the day.
- Annual salvias, such as Salvia splendens or the ‘Black and Blue’ cultivar, produce tall spikes of densely packed, tubular flowers. These salvias are attractive to the birds and prefer a location with at least six hours of full sun each day.
- Calibrachoa (often sold as Million Bells) appeal to hummingbirds and are ideal for containers due to their spreading, mounding habit. Their vibrant colors and long blooming season offer a consistent nectar flow in full sun conditions.
- Begonia boliviensis varieties, like ‘Bonfire,’ produce drooping, trumpet-shaped orange blooms perfect for hanging baskets in partial sun locations.
Optimal Container Placement
The placement of your potted garden is important for attracting the birds. Grouping containers creates a larger, more visible target for a passing hummingbird to spot. A single pot may be overlooked, but a concentrated mass of bright, tubular blooms is difficult to ignore.
Positioning containers near a window or patio railing allows for easy viewing, but the location must accommodate the plants’ light needs. Place pots near a tree or tall shrub, as hummingbirds often use nearby branches for perching between feeding sessions. Ensure the containers receive the correct sun exposure for the chosen plants, such as full sun for salvias and calibrachoa, and partial shade for fuchsias.
Maintenance for Continuous Nectar Flow
Providing high-quality, continuous nectar requires diligent maintenance, as potted plants have limited access to nutrients and water. Container soil dries out faster than garden beds, so consistent watering is necessary to keep plants healthy and producing nectar. A dry, stressed plant will quickly reduce or cease bloom production.
Regular feeding is also necessary because nutrients are rapidly depleted from the confined soil volume. Applying a balanced, slow-release fertilizer or a liquid fertilizer every few weeks will encourage the continuous development of new flowers. Promptly removing spent flowers, known as deadheading, signals the plant to produce more blooms and nectar.
Avoid the use of systemic pesticides, especially products containing neonicotinoids. These insecticides are absorbed into the plant’s vascular system and can contaminate the nectar and pollen ingested by the birds. Exposure to these chemicals, even in small amounts, can disrupt a hummingbird’s high-powered metabolism.