The Art of Hummingbird Gardening: How to Make Your Backyard into a Beautiful Home for Hummingbirds

by Mathew Tekulsky

This book is devoted solely to hummingbird gardening and is a practical guide to cultivating flowers and other plants that will attract the hummingbirds of North America to your home and garden. You will be able to grow flowers in profusion and provide nectar for these smallest of birds, which hover on fast-beating wings while they drink from flowers including pink Chinese lantern, bladderpod, woolly blue curls, scarlet sage, penstemon, columbine, long strips of fuschia, and many others.
The Hummingbird Garden is packed with pertinent information, from a description of what hummingbird gardening is all about to how hummingbirds can be conserved and protected. Tekulsky explains the extraordinary way hummingbirds live and behave, the regions they inhabit throughout the year, and their migrating habits. He discusses how to start your own garden by recommending what to plant and then outlines what interesting events will take place in it. The valuable appendixes give complete information on hummingbird and plant varieties, bird and conservation organizations, and mail-order sources, as well as an extensive bibliography. Beautiful color photos throughout show many different types of hummingbirds enjoying their wonderfully active lives in gardens created expressly for them.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening

215 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 7, 2015

Reviews

[Kaushal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A personnel experience on humming birds

An overall good read with author personnel experience on humming bird. I already have few feeders and a small humming bird garden so I could draw parallels but would have loved it more if it has more technical details. One thing I didn’t like is the lack of the relevant humming bird pics and just repeat pics of Anna’s and Allen’s humming bird. A recommended read if you want to start on this subject.

[Ian Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of great photos of hummingbirds, and fun stories about hummingbirds in gardens. Probably an enjoyable read if you're simply a hummingbird enthusiast looking for a good time. However, it was slim on practical instructions for designing your own garden to attract hummingbirds. There are anecdotes of garden design and plant suggestions scattered throughout, but nothing like a systematic approach to plant selection or garden layout. And there's a fairly extensive appendix of plants that hummingbirds might use, but not much on which plants are _most_ favored, or on what current research has to say on hummingbirds' relationship to various plants. Maybe there really is nothing more to a good hummingbird garden than using a variety of plants they like and following the generic rules of landscape design, but I didn't leave this book feeling like I had any more direction than when I started.

[Dana Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hummingbirds Gardening

Hummingbirds are so fascinating. I have one red glass hummingbird feeder that I feel daily. I read this book to find out what flowers attract hummingbirds in Texas. I know myrtle bushes do. Last summer I had a hose with a small spray on in on in the fall and that was the first I saw them it was buy the pink myrtle bush. Now that I have read this book I just have to find some of the flowers

[Kristin Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The photos were pretty, but the book did not have a lot of substance regarding how and what to plant.

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative book about gardening to attract hummingbirds with photos!