Last week I noticed a little hummingbird buzzing around one of my flowers on our patio. It’s still quite cold up in Whistler and still a bit early to be planting flowers. I’m not a very patient person when it comes to gardening so I couldn’t wait until it warmed. So far I’m the only one in the neighborhood that has flowers on their patio so it’s obvious why the hummingbird was attracted to my patio. Now I only have one plant that is blooming and I wanted to make sure the little guy kept coming back so I went out and bought a hummingbird feeder. I found a beautiful glass feeder at our local hardware store and I decided to make my own nectar to save a little money.
Here’s the recipe I used…
Hummingbird Nectar:
Ingredients:
1/4 cup sugar, 1 cup water
Directions:
Bring water to a boil then add the sugar and remove from heat. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Let cool before filling your feeder.
If you want to attract hummingbirds to you garden there are a few things you can do as a feeder isn’t always enough to attract them and keep them coming back. When looking for flowers for your garden check the plant information tags to see if they’ll attract hummingbirds. Also plant both perennials and annuals. A couple annuals I noticed that attract hummingbirds but don’t always mention it on the tags are petunias and snapdragons; both very easy to grow. Having small trees nearby or something for them to perch on to rest and preen themselves will also help. One more thing you can do is include some type of moving water source to your garden such as a sprinkler, mister, fountain, waterfall, or dripper.
Since we’ve hung the feeder we’ve had two little humming birds buzzing around our patio everyday. Now I just need my flowers to grow.
