7 Perennials That Actually Attract Hummingbirds (And Keep Them Coming Back)

If you've ever stood in your yard and watched a hummingbird hover just inches from a flower, you know there's nothing quite like it. The problem is most people plant for color, not for hummingbirds. They end up with a beautiful garden that hummingbirds fly straight past. In this video, we're covering seven perennials that genuinely, reliably attract hummingbirds, plants that bring them in on the first visit and keep them coming back all season long. Let's get into it. Hey guys, quick heads up. If you see any plants or tools you like in this video, I've linked all my favorites on the screen and down below. Super easy to check out. Alright, let's get into it. Number 1. Agastache Blue Fortune If you only plant one thing on this list, plant agastache. It is without question one of the most hummingbird-attractive perennials you can grow, and it does it for months at a stretch. Blue Fortune sends up long, dense spikes of blue-violet tubular flowers from midsummer well into fall, and hummingbirds find the combination of the tubular shape and the color almost irresistible. The flowers are perfectly sized for a hummingbird's bill, and the plant produces them in such quantity that it can support multiple visits throughout the day. On a warm summer morning, you can stand beside a well-established Blue Fortune and watch hummingbirds rotate through it like it's a refueling station. Beyond the hummingbird appeal, agastache is an outstanding perennial on every level. It's drought-tolerant once established, handles heat beautifully, and comes back reliably every spring, often larger and more floriferous than the year before. Plant it in full sun with good drainage, give it one spring to get established, and it will be one of the most active spots in your garden every summer after that. 2. Salvia Black and Blue Black and Blue Salvia is one of the most celebrated hummingbird plants in American horticulture, and once you see hummingbirds working it in your garden, you'll understand exactly why. The flowers are a deep, vivid cobalt blue emerging from near-black calyxes, a color combination that's striking even without the wildlife it attracts. The tubular flowers are precisely the right shape for hummingbird feeding, and the deep blue color is one that hummingbirds specifically seek out. A well-established plant in mid-summer can have a hummingbird visiting every few minutes throughout the day, working methodically from spike to spike, with a focus that makes the whole garden feel more alive. Black and Blue is technically a tender perennial. It's perennial in zones 8 and above, and grown as an annual in colder zones. But in warm climates, it establishes into a substantial shrubby plant that returns reliably and blooms from summer through the first frost. Even where it's grown as an annual, it's one of the highest value hummingbird investments per plant you can make, because the bloom season is so long and the bird activity so consistent. Number 3. Coral Bells Fire Alarm. Most people know Heuchera as a foliage plant, a groundcover grown for its colorful leaves. What most people don't realize is that Heuchera also blooms, and when the right variety blooms, hummingbirds notice. Fire Alarm is a Heuchera variety selected for its vivid red foliage and its tall wands of small, tubular, bright red flowers that appear in late spring and early summer. Red is the color hummingbirds have the strongest instinctive response to. It's the color they have evolved to associate with nectar-rich tubular flowers, and Fire Alarm delivers that signal clearly. The flowers rise well above the foliage on slender stems, making them easy to access and visible from a distance. The dual nature of this plant is what makes it exceptional. Even when it isn't blooming, the deep red foliage is one of the most striking color accents in the garden. It handles shade better than most hummingbird plants, which makes it invaluable for partially shaded areas where other options on this list wouldn't thrive. Plant it in groups of three at the front of a border, and it delivers both visual impact and wildlife value through the entire growing season. Number four, Penstemon Husker Red. Penstemon is one of the great native hummingbird perennials of North American gardens, and Husker Red is the variety that earns a place in almost every garden it touches. The flowers are pale pink to white, tubular, and produced in tall, airy spikes in late spring and early summer—exactly the shape and structure hummingbirds navigate instinctively. But what makes Husker Red visually distinctive is its foliage—deep, burgundy-red leaves that hold their color through the entire growing season, giving the plant presence and beauty long before and after the flowers appear. The contrast between the dark foliage and the pale flower spikes is quietly elegant and unlike anything else in a perennial border. Husker Red is native to the central U.S. and exceptionally well-adapted to American gardens. It's drought-tolerant, handles clay soil better than most perennials, and has earned the Perennial Plant of the Year award, recognition that reflects how consistently it performs across a wide range of conditions. Plant it in full sun to light shade, divide it every few years to keep it vigorous, and it will bring hummingbirds to your garden every late spring for years to come. Number 5. Cardinal Flower. If there is one perennial that hummingbirds are most deeply hardwired to seek out, it's the cardinal flower. The relationship between this native wildflower and the ruby-throated hummingbird is one of the most studied examples of co-evolution in North American ecology. The flowers are an extraordinary, saturated scarlet red—not coral, not orange red—but a true, vivid crimson that stands out in any garden with an almost supernatural intensity. They're arranged in tall spikes and are tubular in a way that's specifically shaped for hummingbird bills, making cross-pollination between the two species a deeply interdependent relationship. When a hummingbird visits a cardinal flower, it often hovers for several seconds at a time, which gives you the kind of extended viewing opportunity that most hummingbird plants don't provide. Cardinal flower grows natively in moist areas—stream edges, wet meadows, rain gardens—and it needs consistent moisture to perform at its best. In average garden conditions, regular watering through dry spells keeps it happy. It's a short-lived perennial that reseeds itself gently, naturalizing over time into larger colonies. Plant it where hummingbirds can see it from a distance—against a fence, beside a water feature, or at the back of a border—and it will become the most reliably visited spot in your entire garden. 6. Red Hot Poker Mango Popsicle Red Hot Poker is the perennial that makes people stop walking and look, and it has the same effect on hummingbirds. Mango Popsicle produces dramatic torch-shaped flower spikes in a gradient of warm orange fading to soft yellow, rising on tall stems above the foliage. The torch shape is almost architecturally bold in the garden, and hummingbirds respond to both the shape and the color with the same reliable enthusiasm they show toward the red and blue flowers on this list. The dense, tubular florets that make up each spike deliver nectar efficiently and keep hummingbirds working the plant for extended periods. Mango Popsicle is one of the more compact nephophia varieties, which makes it appropriate for residential gardens where the full-sized species would be too imposing. It's drought-tolerant once established, evergreen in mild climates, and the architectural form of the flower spikes adds visual interest even when not in bloom. Use it as a focal point in a sunny border, pair it with Blue Salvia or Agostish for a hummingbird combination that also delivers outstanding color contrast, and expect it to become one of the most reliably photographed corners of your garden. Number 7. Bee Balm Raspberry Wine. We're closing the list with the perennial that perhaps does the best job of creating a sustained hummingbird habitat, rather than just a hummingbird attraction. Raspberry Wine Bee Balm produces shaggy, vivid raspberry red flower heads with the ragged, open structure that hummingbirds navigate with ease. The color is deep and saturated enough to be visible from significant distance, and the blooms appear in mid-summer when the early-season hummingbird plants are beginning to fade, creating a relay of bloom that keeps birds returning throughout the season. Bee Balm is native throughout much of the eastern U.S., which means hummingbirds don't need to learn to visit it. They come instinctively. Raspberry Wine is a mildew-resistant variety, which solves the biggest problem that has historically plagued Bee Balm in gardens. It spreads steadily by rhizomes, which can be managed by dividing every two or three years, and those divisions can be used to expand the planting, creating the kind of large, reliable nectar resource that establishes your garden as a regular hummingbird stop, rather than an occasional one. Plant it in full sun to part shade, keep the soil consistently moist, and by the second or third season, you'll have a colony that reliably hosts hummingbirds from mid-summer through early fall. Those are seven perennials that genuinely attract hummingbirds, not just occasionally, but consistently, season after season, year after year. If this helped, subscribe! New plant content every week. And if you want to see how to design a full hummingbird border using these plants together, that video is linked right here. We'll see you in the next one!