Summer has a soundtrack all its own. Some of it qualifies as noise (I’m thinking mowers, un-muffled motorcycles, the neighbor’s radio, and mockingbirds in the wee hours) but the rest is music. I’d rather listen to daytime bird chatter, crickets at the foundation, cicadas (come July), and the buzz of pollinators than whatever’s cued up on my iPod. The garden is my entertainment center. And number one on my top 40 is the sound of a hummingbird homing in on a flower. I finally heard that tune the other day.

I meant to hang a feeder back in April — Ruby-throated Hummingbirds returned from their tropical winter vacations that long ago — but I’ve had a mental block about it. I’m afraid I’ll forget to replace the syrup (1 part cane sugar dissolved into 4 parts water) every few days before it becomes gross. I also didn’t want to shell out to replace the only feeder I had, a pretty hand-blown dud with a steady drip. I’d rather spend my money on plants.

Hands down the most attractive plant in my garden is native honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens ‘Major Wheeler’. It produces an easily tamed tangle of vines (blooms are produced on new and old growth taking the guesswork and worry out of pruning) covered with clusters of orange throated red trumpets from early June through to a killing frost. Plant it in full sun in well-drained soil and give it some kind of support to grow around like a porch rail or arbor. More importantly, learn from my mistake and site it where you can watch its activity like TV. I hope my neighbors across the street enjoy the view.

On my side of the fence I planted a few choices from another of their favorite plant families. Salvia guaranitica, a 3- to 4-foot tall (depending on cultivar) marginally hardy perennial with spikes of cobalt blue tubular flowers from early summer to frost is known as hummingbird sage for a reason. The birds will tell you its worth the price of admission even if it doesn’t winter over and you have to buy it again next year.

Same goes for pineapple sage (S. elegans). That one holds off to display red spikes from its 4-foot mass of golden foliage until October but it’s worth the wait. Hummingbirds migrating down from the north will program a pineapple sage pitstop into their GPS. Even though the various cultivars of scarlet sage (S. vanhouttei) won’t survive winter in the ground, your investment will pay dividends of orange to burgundy flowers from early summer to frost on gracefully loose 3- to 4-foot stems. Penstemon and columbine blooming now, flowering tobacco (Nicotiana spp.), agastaches, and milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) blooming later add to your hummingbirds’ smorgasbord.

From a lounge chair on my deck I enjoy extra-close encounters when the hummers swoop in for the tastes of fuchsia, zonal geraniums, petunias, cuphea, and pink porterweed (Stachytarpheta mutabilis) I keep in containers. This year, as an experiment, I potted a few seedling starts of the annual vine cardinal climber (Ipomoea x multifida) in hopes they’ll wind up the over-deck arbor.

It’s easy to attract hummingbirds with nectar- and nutrient-rich flowers but they also need protein to power engines that tick somewhere around 100 beats per minute. In my pesticide-free garden they’re welcome to all the baby spiders and insects they can swoop. Make it so in your yard too.

I did finally buy an old-fashioned four-port hanging jar feeder that will probably be a pain to keep clean. But I’ll have one less excuse not to hang it next April and start listening to my favorite music well before the volume turns up on summer’s entertainment center.

Kristin Green is a Bristol-based gardener and author of "Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter". Follow her blog at trenchmanicure.com.