Hummingbird Gardening in the Upper Midwest

NEW We are pleased to have been selected to present two programs at the 2025 PBS Wisconsin Garden & Green Living Expo. You can find the overall schedule for all presentations at: wigardenexpo.com/schedule/all/both/

Our presentations are as follows:

Feb. 7, 2025, 2:45 to 3:45 pm: Salvias: Hidden Treasures for Your Pollinator Garden (Waubesa/Kegonsa room)
Feb. 8, 2025, 2:30 to 3:30 pm: Gardening for Hummingbirds (Monona/Wingra room)
Feb. 9, 2025, 1:00 to 2:00 pm: Salvias: Hidden Treasures for Your Pollinator Garden (Monona/Wingra room)

Our thanks to everyone who attended the 2024 garden tours. A special thanks to:

Bob Ross from the Middleton, WI Wild Birds Unlimited for donating items for the door prize drawing.
Janice Selfridge and Jim Stewart for donating hummingbird note cards
Larry and Emily Scheunemann for teaching their class on hummingbirds
Mickey O'Connor and Katie for attempting to band hummingbirds and teaching the public about this important scientific endeavor.

We gave an abbreviated version of our "Gardening for Hummingbirds" presentation as part of a zoom webinar for the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. You can watch the presentation on youtube:

Our thanks to everyone who attended our two presentations at the 2024 PBS Wisconsin Garden & Landscape Expo. Here are links to our slides and handouts:

Important announcement

Our favorite mail order nursery for salvias was Flowers by the Sea. The owners of Flowers by the Sea, Kermit and Vicki Carter, are retiring. Our hearty congratulations to Kermit and Vicki for their years of providing such high quality plants. We wish them well in retirement.

There are multiple web pages on our site that reference obtaining salvias from Flowers by the Sea. For some of these salvias, FBTS was the only source for the plant. Over the winter of 2023-2024, we will be updating our website to reflect the closure of FBTS and if there are alternate sources for the salvias.

Gallery of hummingbird flowers

The Nectar News

Resources

Feature articles/video

Rufous/Anna's in Wisconsin

Wisconsin Buff Bellied hummingbird

Wisconsin's first state record of an Allen's hummingbird

About Us

Below is a video of a hummingbird being banded during the September 14, 2016 garden tour:

Click this link to watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVRhyN0Rjbw

Welcome to our web site of hummingbird gardening. We have been into this for 25 years and have learned from books, experts around the country and our own trial and error. Above are links to our Gallery of Hummingbird Flowers (with a hummingbird at each flower) and our newsletter, The Nectar News (previously, the Dane County Nectar News). The nectar news is no longer mailed as hard copies. Periodic updates are sent by email and available on our blog. If you wish to join our email distribution list (we never share your email address with anyone else), please send an email to Kathi at her address listed at the bottom of this page.