Out of the wind makes me think hollyhocks!! Not sure about hummers but the bees and I sure like them. My hummers liked obedient plant and red bee balm. Both of these can be invasive though. I also like the blue and the lavender varieties of bee balm, and I think they are less invasive!!

Happy seed hunting!! Nancy.

Thanks! You know, I saw a couple varieties of bee balm that I thought I might try. One is monarda fistulosa and the other is monarda bradburiana (sp?). They are pink or lavender-ish. Lavender bradburiana is supposed to take partial shade which would be nice and it blooms earlier than monarda fistulosa. Monarda fistulosa is supposed to tolerate dry soil. I thought that I might plant it in with my herbs since it is supposed to have medicinal uses. I'm not sure if this one has aspirations of world domination or not. If I start it from seed and it doesn't work out, it doesn't hurt as badly to pull it out.

I do a lot of planting for hummingbird since we have bears in my rural area so that I can't have any type of bird feeder. I try to have some long bloomers to fill in between the plants that have shorter periods of bloom. Humming birds regularly visit my Major Wheeler honeysuckle, a native red-flowering vine, Lonicera sempervirens. It literally had at least some blooms from some time in May or early June until now, though we have had several nights of temperatures into the low 20's even in this unseasonably warm fall. I have a deep red single tall hollyhock (Alcea, not Malva) that the hummers visit regularly. It's a biennial that self-seeds but not aggressively in my garden, easy to remove where not wanted. I have these two long-bloomers next to each other by windows where I can see and hear the hummers arrive.

In spring the hummingbirds flock to the native red columbine, Aquilegia canadensis which is another self-seeder that is easy to keep under control, and also to an unnamed Heuchera with tall red flowers. Lupine doesn't bloom for a really long time, but they visit it while it's blooming, and deadheading can prolong bloom. They find Salvia Black and Blue a winner along with various Penstemons and Agastaches, but I won't make recommendations (due to the differences in our climate) other than to say that something like B&B in a really large pot, deadheaded regularly, is fairly easy for me to control. As to size for some of the others, can you make one bed (or even the end of one bed) just for a few really large plants with a bed width to match?

Midsummer I have Kniphofia, red hot poker, for them to visit, though this is a terrible photo of the flower past being ready to be deadheaded.

In late summer Lobelia cardinalis, the native cardinal flower, has tubular red flowers popular with hummingbirds. They also really like the monkshood, Aconitum, though it is poisonous to us. It has stunning spires of blue to blue-purple flowers.

Most or all of these can be started from seed, though I think the honeysuckle would be easier started from cuttings of a named variety to get a shade of red/orange/yellow you like and improved foliage health and flowers of a selected plant.

Let us know what you end up planting, and I'd love to see photos of your beds!

P.S. - I prefer the terms "overly aggressive" or "garden thug" for those plants that are a problem in garden beds, just to help differentiate them from botanically invasive plants which are non-natives that spread by seed into wild areas (think kudzu, tree of heaven, burning bush, Norway maple, buckthorn, Japanese honeysuckle, and Japanese barberry, just to name a few.)