Wise Pairings: Best Flowers to Plant with Vegetables
Grow a profusion of pollen- and nectar-rich flowers among your crops to help boost pollination, control pests, and provide eye-pleasing pops of color.
By Rosalind Creasy
In the 1970s, when I was a budding landscape designer newly exciting about strategizing the best flowers to plant with vegetables, I attended the garden opening of one of my clients. As I walked around anonymously, wine glass in hand, I overheard many guests exclaiming, “Do you see that? She put flowers in the vegetable garden!”
In the United States, segregating vegetables from flowers still seems like such a hard-and-fast rule that when I lecture on edible landscaping, one of the first things I mention is that I’ve checked the Constitution, and planting flowers in a vegetable garden is not forbidden. Not only can you put flowers in with vegetables, you should.
I admit that, in the ’70s, I first intermixed my flowers and vegetables because I was gardening in the front yard of my suburban home and hoped the neighbors wouldn’t notice or complain as long as the veggies were surrounded by flowers. Soon, however, I discovered I had fewer pest problems, I saw more and more birds, and my crops were thriving.
It turns out that flowers are an essential ingredient in establishing a healthy garden because they attract beneficial insects and birds, which control pests and pollinate crops. Most gardeners understand this on some level. They may even know that pollen and nectar are food for insects, and that seed heads provide food for birds. What some may not realize is just how many of our wild meadows and native plants have disappeared under acres of lawn, inedible shrubs and industrial agriculture’s fields of monocultures, leaving fewer food sources for beneficial critters. With bees and other pollinators under a chemical siege these days and their populations in drastic decline, offering chemical-free food sources and safe havens is crucial. Plus, giving beneficial insects supplemental food sources of pollen and nectar throughout the season means they’ll stick around for when pests show up.
Envision an Integrated Edible Landscape
One of the cornerstones of edible landscaping is that gardens should be beautiful as well as bountiful. Mixing flowers and vegetables so that both are an integral part of the garden’s design is another key. Let’s say you have a shady backyard, so you decide to put a vegetable garden in the sunny front yard. Many folks would install a rectangular bed or wooden boxes, and plant long rows of vegetables, maybe placing a few marigolds in the corners, or planting a separate flower border. In either case, the gardener will have added plants offering a bit of much-needed pollen and nectar.
Integrating an abundance of flowers among the vegetables, however, would impart visual grace while also helping beneficial insects accomplish more. Plentiful food sources will allow the insects to healthily reproduce. Plus, most of their larvae have limited mobility. For example, if a female lady beetle or green lacewing lays her eggs next to the aphids on your violas, the slow-moving, carnivorous larvae won’t be able to easily crawl all the way across the yard to also help manage the aphids chowing down on your broccoli.
In addition to bringing in more “good guys” to munch pests, flowers will give you more control because they can act as a useful barrier — a physical barrier as opposed to the chemical barriers created in non-organic systems. The hornworms on your tomato plant, for instance, won’t readily migrate to a neighboring tomato plant if there’s a tall, “stinky” marigold blocking the way.
More at link: https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/best-flowers-to-plant-with-vegetables-zm0z15fmzsto/
Flowers like marigolds also deter rabbits and deer some.
Since deer don’t like strong scents, I like to plant marigolds and dill in the garden.
A few of the companion planting guides here include flowers and of course herbs and also Integrated Pest Control. https://permasteader.route66custom.com/cloud/index.php/s/eMgoEdoxFRje73X
Companion Planting & some Integrated Pest Control in the Gardening folder and also in the Pests folder and don’t overlook the Bees folder(Bees love Flowers and visa versa)
What a beautiful garden that is. As someone who shoots,photos, that would be a great place to hang out to watch for insects for close up macro shots, birds etc. So relaxing in such a surrounding
I found this guy on yt that specializes in restoring the wild meadows & native plants:
https://www.youtube.com/@NativeHabitatProject
He's pretty cool.