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Tag: Penstemons

  • The Best Plants to Attract Hummingbirds to Your Garden

    All week, we’re revisiting the most popular stories of 2025, including this one from March.

    The humble hummingbird has always been a pollinator favorite among gardeners, but lately it’s been attracting more (and new) buzz. Katie Tamony, chief marketing officer and trend spotter at Monrovia, tells us she’s been seeing increased interest in drawing hummingbirds to the garden. “I’ve heard it called the next glamour animal—the one they most want to take a photo of, the one that stops them in their tracks when they encounter it in the garden,” she shares.

    Most devoted hummingbird lovers know that these tiny winged creatures especially love bright, tubular or vase-shaped flowers. “The specific shape of these blooms can accommodate the long bills of the hummingbirds, making it easier for them to gather nectar,” says Katie. Another tip: Plant these plants en masse to create a concentrated nectar source: “Their incredibly high metabolism calls for lots of nectar, and they can get it more easily by visiting a mass of flowering plants in one area.” You may also want to consider staggering blooms times for a longer feeding season.

    “But nectar isn’t the only thing that keeps hummingbirds happy,” says Katie. “They’re also always feasting on small insects, a lesser known but essential part of the hummingbird diet. Encouraging insects by not spraying pesticides in the garden and growing a diverse selection of plants is important.”

    Ultimately, of course, there’s no surefire way to lure hummingbirds to your yard. To up your chance of a sighting, Katie suggests mixing appropriate cultivars, like those listed below, with natives in the garden “to create an insect-rich environment that offers more and longer blooms than natives alone.” Add a hummingbird feeder if you want, but it’s not a must: “We used to have one that seemed like the squirrels were also feasting on, so we got rid of it. And we still see a lot of hummingbirds visit our yard.”

    Below, Katie’s picks for cultivars beloved by hummingbirds.

    Featured image above by BudOhio via Flickr.

    Photography below courtesy of Monrovia.

    ‘Stoplights’ Red Yucca

    �216;Stoplights�217; Red Yucca
    Above: ‘Stoplights’ Red Yucca

    ‘Stoplights’ is a no-brainer when it comes to hot, arid climates. Once established, this low-maintenance plant thrives with little water. Slender green leaves send out tall spikes adorned with crimson-red flowers—the color that hummingbirds are famously attracted to. Recommended for USDA Zones 5-11.

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  • Leslie Needham Design: 8 Ideas to Steal from Her Gardens in Bedford, NY

    Leslie Needham Design: 8 Ideas to Steal from Her Gardens in Bedford, NY

    This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, nature-based gardening, on how you can be more sustainable in your landscapes at home. 

    “A garden needs a heartbeat,” says Leslie Needham, founder of her eponymous design firm in Bedford, NY. And Needham will be the first to admit that her former English-style garden—tightly clipped hedges, filled with plants originating from around the world—didn’t quite have one. “It was pretty stagnant,” she says. But when she looked down at the Mianus River Gorge, a protected stretch of land filled with native plants that abuts her property, she saw a flourish of birds, animals, insects. It thrummed with activity—it had a heartbeat. 

    Working with Andrea Spunberg, a senior designer at her firm, who was also one of Needham’s first landscape design students when she taught at the New York Botanical Garden, she began incorporating native plants into existing beds, converting areas of lawn into meadow and letting plants grow more freely and openly. Soon phloxes and asters courted butterflies and bees. Shrubs like bayberry and Fothergilla provided shelter for wildlife. And grasses and sedges, like little bluestem and carex, offered four season beauty. 

    Her new design philosophy focuses on “blurring the edges horticulturally to provide a connection, as Doug Tallamy encourages, to the natural landscape around us,” she says. “There’s a comfort that comes when a planting is correct for its environment,” says Needham. “It just feels of a place.” Spunberg agrees, “It feels alive.” 

    Below, Needham and Spunberg share eight ways to make your garden spring into life.  

    Photography of Leslie Needham Design.

    1. Embrace the vernacular.

    Leslie and Andrea stand in front of Needham’s greenhouse. The two do extensive research of the native flora for each project, reading extensively, walking in local parks to see what’s growing and where, and studying the conditions of the property before coming up with a plant palette.
    Above: Leslie and Andrea stand in front of Needham’s greenhouse. The two do extensive research of the native flora for each project, reading extensively, walking in local parks to see what’s growing and where, and studying the conditions of the property before coming up with a plant palette.

    “Architecturally, I understood how a house needs to fit into its setting. It was built in a certain style for a certain reason to a certain scale,” says Needham. “But then I realized, there’s a vernacular in the landscape too and you get it through native plants. I now think of genius loci: what is the spirit of this place and how do you get it?” For Spunberg, who grew up in Hungary, conserving natural resources by gardening with native plants was part of her upbringing. When she moved to the states, she brought this sustainable approach with her, gravitating to native plants in her designs out of resourcefulness but also because she is totally smitten with them. “Wildflowers are so much joy,” she says. “I love the understated beauty, the life they bring, and the connection to the wilder landscape.” 

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