Growing flowers alongside vegetables is worth doing for the beauty and joy it brings us, but this kind of companion planting is even more beneficial for our vegetables. Whether it's with pollinator-feeding perennials, fast-growing annuals, or herbs that are going to seed, planting flowers in a vegetable garden is one of the best ways to improve yields and improve the soil.
While certain flowers (like marigolds and calendula) help repel aphids or moths, others lure pests toward them (like borage and nasturtiums), helping to protect edible plants nearby. Still others attract masses of bees, help cultivate healthy soil, and improve the growing conditions of nearby vegetables.
This guide walks through the best flowers to grow in a vegetable garden, with the benefits of each flower and companion planting suggestions along the way. Ultimately, whether you decide to grow a couple of these flowers in raised beds or plant a perennial flower border around your vegetables, the overall effect will be a healthier garden and a more rewarding gardening experience.
Skip Ahead: Benefits of companion planting • Best companion flowers for vegetables
Benefits of companion planting with flowers
There are countless benefits to planting flowers in a vegetable garden, and not all of them to do with a better harvest. But beauty and enjoyment aside, here are a few ways that interplanting with flowers can improve your harvests:
- Providing shade: Some flowers grow tall to provide shade for vegetables and herbs that benefit from less intense sun during the summer. This can extend harvest windows and reduce the need for extra watering.
- Covering soil: Companion flowers that have a low-growing, spreading habit can act as a living mulch, preventing water loss in the soil and suppressing weeds.
- Improving soil condition: Flowers interplanted with vegetables will send out roots that help to break up and aerate the soil, making it easier for neighboring plants to access nutrients and water.
- Deterring pests: Marigolds and calendula are particularly effective at deterring pests, but some companion flowers can be paired with vegetables to repel specific problem pests.
- Attracting pollinators: Growing any flowers in a vegetable garden will attract pollinators. The flowers on this list are particularly effective at it.
- Attracting beneficial insects: Good companion flowers attract predatory and parasitic insects that prey on common garden pests like aphids, caterpillars, and mites.
The best companion flowers for vegetables
The most useful flowers for vegetable gardens also happen to be some of the easiest flowers to grow, and many on this list are annuals that you can grow from seed. A few others-- like lavender and comfrey-- are best purchased as starts and planted in a permanent position, likely in a flower border.
It's always worth keeping in mind that diverse gardens are typically happier gardens, with more pest, predator, and pollinator activity keeping the whole environment in balance. The companion flowers on this list are all particularly useful for one aspect of garden management or another. They aren't the only flowers that will help your plants grow well, but they are a good place to start.
Here are a few of the most useful flowers to plant in a vegetable garden for deterring pests and improving yields:
Get 9 Free Companion Planting Charts
All of the companion planting on Make it Seasonal, consolidated into handy PDFs that you can save to your phone.
Click through to access the whole collection
1. Borage
Borage is a favorite of bees and butterflies, making it ideal for improving pollination in plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. It also attracts beneficial insects like lacewings and hoverflies, which prey on soft-bodied garden pests like aphids and thrips. Researchers have even found borage to be an effective trap crop for aphids, as well as the parasitic wasps that prey on aphids.
Borage grows best in well-drained, evenly moist soil and full sun, but it will tolerate poorer soils and partial shade.
2. Cilantro
Most of us may not think of cilantro as a flower, but it is a cool-weather herb that goes to seed at the first sign of heat. By early summer, it sends up delicate, lacy foliage and white umbellifer flowers that attract beneficial insect predators like lacewings, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps.
In addition to being beautiful, cilantro flowers produce coriander seeds that are typically ready for harvest in late summer. Even if you grow cilantro for its leaves in the spring and fall, it's well worth letting it grow on as a companion flower for the rest of the summer.
Read More: The 9 Best Companion Plants for Cilantro
3. Comfrey
Comfrey is a large herb in the borage family that spreads easily and produces purple flowers that are highly attractive to bees. The herb's spreading habit would make it difficult to companion plant with, but it can be useful in a flower border around a vegetable patch.
Aside from attracting pollinators, comfrey's uses are varied: it can provide an organic homemade fertilizer; its leaves are a nutrient-rich mulch for fruiting vegetables; and a homemade comfrey oil or comfrey salve is fantastically useful for skin ailments and muscle pain.
Comfrey grows a long taproot that allows it to pull up nutrients that other plants can't reach. This is what makes comfrey tea, a fragrant concoction of comfrey leaves, flowers, and stems 'steeped' in water for a month or so, such a potent fertilizer for fruiting vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash, and watermelons.
Alternatively, placing a mulch of comfrey leaves at the base of other vegetables can provide a gradual release of those same nutrients. Thanks to its slightly prickly stems and leaves, a comfrey mulch may also help repel slugs.
4. Cosmos
Cosmos are tall, annual flowers in the daisy family that send up thin stems with delicate blooms. They add height and a wonderful swaying habit to a flower border, and dwarf varieties would do well interplanted in a vegetable garden. They grow best in full sun and loose soil that's allowed to dry between waterings.
Cosmos attract pollinators as well as beneficial insect predators, including lacewings, hoverflies, tachinid flies, and parasitic wasps. The flowers can attract aphids, but that's nothing to worry about; they couldn't attract beneficial insects without also providing a food source.
If you're concerned about aphids, plant cosmos a short distance from the vegetables you want to protect. This will allow it to grow as a trap crop for the aphids while still attracting pollinators to your vegetables.
5. Lavender
Lavender attracts bees like few other flowers, but it does have particular soil requirements. As a Mediterranean plant, lavender needs fast draining soil with little nutrition and full sun. This makes it an impractical flower to grow with vegetables in a raised bed or in-ground rows, but it has much to offer as part of a flower border around a veg patch.
For gardeners who struggle with pollination, growing a row of lavender near your fruiting vegetables is a reliable way to improve pollination rates. English lavender is preferable for cooking, as its scent is decidedly less intense than that of French lavender.
Lavender also grows well in pots, and makes a natural companion plant for rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage.
6. Marigolds
Marigolds are perhaps unfashionable as a bedding plant, but they'll always be one of the best flowers to grow in a vegetable garden. They are more studied than almost any other companion flower, and researchers have identified a long list of benefits to companion planting with marigolds:
- Protect against whiteflies
- Reduce damage from aphids, cabbage butterflies, cabbage moths, and flea beetles
- Reduce root-knot nematode populations
- Support parasitic wasps that prey on stink bugs
- Reduce diamondback moth populations
- Disrupt the cabbage root fly's and onion root fly's ability to locate host plants
African and French marigolds (both of which are from Mexico and Central America) seem to be the most effective varieties for repelling pests. Either variety is likely to help reduce pest damage when planted next to tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, cabbages, kale, broccoli, garlic, and onions.
7. Nasturtiums
Along with marigolds, nasturtiums are one of the most popular flowers to plant with vegetables thanks to their low-growing habit and pollinator activity.
Nasturtiums produce bright orange, red, and yellow flowers that bees love. With the exception of climbing varieties, they grow to not much more than one foot tall but can spread to three feet wide. This makes nasturtiums ideal for covering the soil, suppressing weeds, and preventing water loss. In full sun, nasturtiums will happily spread to fill the space between brassicas, tomatoes, or peppers, attracting pollinators and improving the soil as they go. They may even help repel cucumber beetles and whiteflies.
Nasturtiums also attract nematodes and aphids. Nematodes aren't generally a concern in backyard gardens, but if you have noticed root-knot nematode damage, you might see improvements from planting nasturtiums as a trap crop a short distance from your vegetables. Combining this with interplanting marigolds in the vegetable beds creates a push-pull effect.
Read More: The 9 Best Nasturtium Companion Plants
8. Pot marigolds
Also known as calendula (Calendula officinalis), pot marigolds aren't related to French or African marigolds (Tagetes), but their daisy-like orange and yellow flowers explain their common name. Also like marigolds, calendula is a useful companion flower for repelling pests.
In fact, calendula may be even more effective than marigolds for deterring cabbage pests. At the very least, we know that they deter the most common cabbage pests, attract some parasitoids that prey on aphids, and repel green peach aphids. This makes pot marigolds a good companion planting option for brassicas, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers.
Calendula is also a versatile flower for the home apothecary; homemade calendula oil makes a fantastic cleansing oil or ingredient in a skin-healing calendula salve. If nothing else, harvesting the flowers will ensure continued blooms throughout the summer.
9. Sweet alyssum
Sweet alyssum is a low-growing annual flower perfect for covering the soil, suppressing weeds, and attracting pollinators. It can survive winter in very warm climates, but in most it will bloom in spring and fall before dying back in the first frost.
In addition to filling the soil and attracting pollinators, sweet alyssum's small flowers attract beneficial insects like pirate bugs, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps. Though it would do well in a flower border, sweet alyssum is a particularly good companion plant for peppers and potatoes.
10. Sweet peas
Sweet peas are climbing, non-edible flowers that grow and bloom in the spring and fall. They make wonderfully fragrant cut flowers, attract pollinators to a spring garden, and can improve the soil for the vegetable that follows them.
As a legume, sweet peas fix nitrogen in their root nodules. This won't provide much extra nitrogen for nearby plants while the peas are growing, but cutting the plants back in early summer and leaving them as a mulch will. Follow sweet peas with leafy greens or brassicas for the best effect.
11. Zinnias
Companion planting with zinnias can lure cucumber beetles away from cucumbers and other cucurbits. That's not the only reason to grow zinnias with your vegetables, though; they also attract pollinators, grow quickly to fill the space between plants and cover the soil, and provide shade for companion vegetables and herbs that need some protection from intense summer sun.
Zinnias are a fast-growing annual that's easy to grow from seed. They need full sun and well draining soil, but they're largely adaptable plants that will keep flowering right up until the last frost. Dwarf varieties are also available for interplanting with tomatoes and other full-sun veg in raised beds.
Read More: The 9 Best Zinnia Companion Plants