The Bright Red Flower That'll Help Fill Your Garden With Hummingbirds

The fire pink (Silene Virginica), also known as cliff pink and scarlet catchfly, is a striking wildflower that serves as an excellent attraction for hummingbirds to visit your garden. If you want to DIY the perfect hummingbird haven for your garden, planting fire pinks could be a great start, as their bright red flowers and nectar will surely attract them. Hummingbirds are great for your garden, and not only because they're stunning to watch as they flit around at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour. Hummingbirds are crucial pollinators, serving as the exclusive pollinators to more than 160 native North American plants.

Fire pink flowers are not, as their name suggests, pink. Instead, at the end of each stem is a flower that boasts five red petals. The long, tubular flowers are particularly appealing to hummingbirds who are ideal pollinators for the plant. The native North American plant will grow up to 2 or 3 feet tall, but usually remains closer to the ground. For your fire pinks to best prosper, you should plant them in partial sunlight and in well-draining soil. You should err on the side of caution and not overwater your fire pinks, as the plant does best in dry or mildly moist soil and is drought-resistant. Additionally, fire pinks will self-seed, but you can also propagate them easily with cuttings.

Fire pinks are not the only plants that attract hummingbirds to your garden — you could also plant one of these 13 stunning plants. Hummingbirds are drawn to brightly colored plants with a high nectar content. Hummingbirds fill a void in pollinating several flowers that bees struggle to detect, primarily red flowers like the fire pink, which specifically attract ruby-throated hummingbirds. In addition to planting things in your garden for hummingbirds to pollinate, you should plant for nesting hummingbirds by growing dense shrubs and trees to house them near the nectar you provide them.

In addition to the nectar from fire pinks, you can support visiting hummingbirds with a nectar-filled feeder, making your garden even more hospitable to the beautiful birds. Once you have hung your feeder, you could also DIY the perfect homemade nectar.