A key part of any successful organic garden is companion planting flowers into the mix.
Flowers are an excellent way to add visual interest to your garden, and selecting them wisely can come with a wealth of advantages such as inviting pollinators, creating homes for predator insects and even masking the scent of a neighbouring plant to keep it hidden from unwanted pest damage.
I have chosen these because they are exceptional options for companion planting into your vegetable garden.
Keep in mind that this is not by any means an exhaustive list (but it’s a pretty long one)- I’d need to write a whole book for that! Instead, I will focus on my favourite options. These are a little easier to grow, will bring pollinators and really benefit your garden.
Head Straight To These Flower Categories:
Think of it as my personal best-of list. You can also watch the detailed video below.
What Are Companion or Beneficial Flowers?
This is rooted in the highly successful organic gardening method of ‘companion planting’ (you can read more about companion planting as a whole at this blog post Grow a Successful Garden With This Free Companion Planting Guide).
This post is specifically using flowers to bring balance to the eco-system in your garden. The flowers invite pollinators into the garden or, in some cases, deter bugs and pests from finding your plants by masking the scent. Plus it really beautifies your whole garden.
Increased Pollination Of Fruiting Plants
There are many plants in the garden such as the cucurbits family (cucumbers, squash, pumpkins are all in the cucurbits family) that do not self-pollinate.
Each plant will sprout male and female flowers separately, and until pollination occurs, ie. the pollen gets from the male flower over to the female flower, the female flowers are not going to bear fruit. Yes you could manually pollinate them by hand with a paintbrush or cotton swab, but the process is very delicate and time-consuming. A more efficient solution is to plant beneficial flowers that will attract pollinators like honey bees to do the work for you. #lazygardener
Flower Bloom Time
A good strategy is to plant flowers with a variety of bloom times. Some plants will flower all season long, which is terrific. Those ones are the easiest to keep around. Others might only bloom early in the summer, really late, or even mid-season. That way, you’re going to have continuously blooming flowers, and you won’t end up with a ‘flower drought’. Your garden will look better and keep the pollinators visiting throughout the season.
Colour Variety
Did you know that bumblebees have a favourite colour? They love flowers of every colour, but they are particularly drawn to blues and purples, whereas yellows and oranges tend to attract more butterflies. Envisioning which guests you want to attract into your garden will help you choose which flowers to include.
My Favourite All Around Companion Planting Flowers
Borage – Borago officinalis
- Perennial: No. Annual Self-Seeder.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed and/or sprinkled around yard & garden.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes – edible flowers.
Borage – sometimes called the starflower for the star-like shape – has edible flowers that taste like cucumbers, and they flower prolifically. A single plant will produce a lot of flowers. They can get up to three feet tall and often require extra support, so they don’t fall over. Unsupported borage plants can end up smothering or shading other things in your garden if not careful.
Borage is a self-seeding plant, not a perennial, so you can expect many baby borage plants to appear next season wherever the original was planted. Keep this in mind as it can be considered a weed to some. I choose to let them self seed strategically. I keep a few plants and weed out the rest. This saves me time in seed starting it myself.
The flavour is incredible, and bumblebees go wild for Borage. I consider it a must-have in my garden.
Marigolds – Tagetes patula
- Perennial: No. Annual.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed and/or sprinkled around yard & garden.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes edible flowers.
Marigolds are low maintenance and very easy to grow. They are also edible (petals taste best).
The aroma from marigolds is bright and potent – strong enough that they’ll often mask a lot of the other plants in your garden. This is key as a companion plant because it can hide the smell of neighbouring plants from unwanted pests. A great one stick all over the place in your garden.
Marigolds come in many different varieties, with different sizes, bloom shapes, and more. Some of them can grow to be quite tall. In one instance, I bought a variety that grew to be two feet, so keep that in mind. You don’t want to accidentally plant something that’s going to throw shade on neighbouring plants.
Zinnia elegans
- Perennial: No. Annual.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed and/or sprinkled around yard & garden.
- Edible / Medicinal: No
There is so much diversity in zinnia varieties that it is always a must in my garden. Zinnia’s range from short bush growing varieties to tall 3-4″ plants. They come a wide range of colours from yellows, oranges, reds to pinks.
Pollinators love them. They are popular with both bees and butterflies in my garden. They make a great cut flower to have in the garden. The plant will keep producing flowers for you all season long.
These easy to care for sturdy flowers are great to sprinkle around right in your vegetable garden.
Alyssum – Lobularia maritima
- Perennial: No. Annual.
- Planting Area: Use as row/ground cover crop in between rows in garden.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes edible flowers.
Alyssum tiny edible little flower. Pollinators love these flowers. Most alyssum flowers are purple, but you can find white or even yellow ones. These flowers grow really low to the ground, making them great for ground cover and filling in between plants without causing any unwanted shade. These plants grow to be between 4-8 inches at their tallest, but they are a sprawling plant, so the branches can grow outwards up to 36 inches!
Unfortunately, pollinators aren’t the only ones drawn to these plants – flea beetles also love them. For that reason, it might be a good idea to wait until the flea beetles go away, which is typically 2-3 weeks after the spring season begins. If you don’t want to wait, you can also plant it with a row cover fabric. Luckily flea beetles aren’t very smart, and if they find these flowers in one part of your garden, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will migrate to the other parts of your garden. You can use this to your advantage through a method called trap cropping.
Butterfly Bush Milkweed – Ascelpias sp.
- Perennial: Yes. Zone 3
- Planting Area: Plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: No.
This next one is a very fun flower that is also a perennial (even in my zone 3). If you have a perennial garden already or are considering planting butterfly flowers, you may not want to stick it right in your vegetable garden. Instead, plant them somewhere close by. If you keep these flowers in their own little section, they will always come back. And, as you might have guessed, butterfly flowers are very popular with butterflies.
Nasturtium – Tropaeolum majus & T. minus
- Perennial: No. Annual.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed and/or sprinkled around yard & garden.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes edible flowers & leaves.
Nasturtium is a flowering plant that is edible. both the leaves and flowers are actually quite spicy. They can add a great, healthy kick to foods like wraps, salads – anything really.
They grow in both a bush and vining variety. The climbing variety can get up to three feet tall. They are absolutely gorgeous trellised. Plant a little of each in your garden for diversity.
Unfortunately, flea beetles also love this plant, and if they get to it early in the season, they can decimate the entire thing. The flavour and colour though make it worth dealing with flea beetles. Planting them just a little bit later can be a great way to avoid the flea beetles getting them.
Petunias – Petunioideae
- Perennial: No. Annual.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed and/or sprinkled around yard & garden.
- Edible / Medicinal: No
Here’s another plant that everybody adores. They are great to have in your garden and work well as ground cover, and with over 20 different species, there is sure to be one that fits your space. You can even find special waterfall petunias – those are the ones that will spill out and over your pots. They’re adventurous and like to spread out, making them perfect for filling in empty ground spots or spilling over the edge of a pot or raised garden bed.
Keep picking off the dead flowers (also known as deadheading), they will keep producing flowers abundantly all season long.
I have also found them to be quite cold tolerant as well. They have even survived freezing nights underneath my low tunnels.
Phacelia campanularia – California Blue Bells
- Perennial: No. Annual Self Seeder.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed as an annual to self-seed and/or plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: No
This has quickly become one of my favourite flowers. It is a low growing bushy plant with a profusion of tiny blue flowers. It is often one of the first annuals to flower in the season, even in my short zone 3 growing zone. This makes an ideal choice to support pollinators early in the season. It will flower for the better part of the season.
It will self seed itself if your don’t dead head it. As with other self seeders on this list, use it to your advantage by choosing to give it a forever home to do it’s thing season after season.
Liatris – Liatris spicata
- Perennial: Yes. Zone 3.
- Planting Area: Plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: No
Liatris also goes by the name Blazing Star. It is a very tall plant making it a great beneficial flower for the back area of your perennial flower garden reaching 1-5′ tall. Plant it in a little bit of mulch and it will be very happy.
This flower is a pollinator favourite as it grows dense bunches of flowers ideally suited to butterflies. It is most common in purple and white colours.
This is a very hard plant that is perennial even in my zone 3.
Sunflowers – Helianthus annuus
- Perennial: No. Self Seeder.
- Planting Area: Plant in it’s own space, especially if you are growing mammoth varieties.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes – edible seeds.
Once you have grown sunflowers once you will never go back. The big bright beautiful sunflowers are so showy and huge favourites to all the pollinators, as well as the birds & squirrels once the seeds set.
If you grow in a short season and want to grow the mammoth varieties, I recommend seed starting them indoors 6 weeks or so before your last frost date. It takes those big plants longer to get to flowering and they may not set seeds before frost hits otherwise. Sunflowers don’t particularly like their roots disturbed so use toilet paper rolls or peat pots to lessen the disturbance at transplanting time.
Bachelor Button – Centaurea cyanus
- Perennial: No. Annual Self Seeder.
- Planting Area: Plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: No
This is a super cute little flower that comes in purples, pinks, reds, blues and white. Most common is blue. It grows quite tall but cannot support itself so you will usually see it fallen over or leaning on its neighbour.
It is not a perennial but will self seed itself where it was planted. You can use this to your advantage by allowing it to return year after year in the perennial area of your garden.
It is very low maintenance flower making it a great addition.
What Are Medicinal Flowers?
Medicinal flowers can be used for things like tea, mouth rinse, skincare, or health-boosting additions to your diet. All of the flowers in my list here are self-seeders, which means they will continue to spread and multiply by themselves. This can be a concern because it means they might spread into unwanted areas if kept unchecked, but it also means that they will produce more with zero effort, so keep that in mind when choosing which ones will work best for you.
My Favourite Medicinal Flowers
Chamomile – Matricaria recutita
- Perennial: No. Annual self-seeding.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed as an annual to self-seed and/or plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes – both.
I absolutely love chamomile. Chamomile is easily and commonly used to make tea. It is popular for its calming and relaxing effects. The flavours have hints of apple and honey and add a delicious floral sweetness. As an added bonus, bees are in love with the pearly white petals on chamomile flowers.
It self seeds prolifically! If you do not want to be weeding out extras from your garden then keep it to a “perennial” type area of your yard / garden to self seed.
Keep all your seeds organized and ready to go for the season with this super cute seed organizer!
Calendula – Calendula officinalis
- Perennial: No. Annual self-seeding.
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed as an annual to self-seed and/or plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes – both.
Calendula is another flower that bees love. They can grow to be 15 inches tall. Keep an eye as they grow; you may need to prop them up to keep them from slumping over onto other plants. If you keep deadheading (plucking off the old flowers) they will produce for you abundantly for the entire season.
The oils in the calendula flower are known for being really great for skincare. They are great for making medicinal lotions and oils. I enjoy throwing them in the bath as well.
It self seeds prolifically! If you do not want to be weeding out extras from your garden then keep it to a “perennial” type area of your yard / garden to self seed.
Dandelions – Taraxacum officinale
- Perennial: No. Annual self-seeding.
- Planting Area: Wild area free from herbicide use.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes – both.
We don’t always love dandelions, but they are medicinal and deserve a little more recognition. Did you know you can make things like teas and tinctures from dandelions? They also flower very early, which is really beneficial because they bring pollinators into your yard before most of your other flowers bloom.
The trick is keeping them in balance, which isn’t as difficult as people may think. If you want to make sure that your dandelions don’t spread, you can simply pluck the flowers before they seed. I strongly suggest giving these guys a second look!
Lavender – Lavandula angustifolia
- Perennial: Zones 6+
- Planting Area: Directly in garden bed as an annual or perennial and/or plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes – both.
Who doesn’t love lavender? A delightfully aromatic perennial – mainly if you live in zones four or five. I personally dig up my lavender and bring it inside for winter as I am in Zone 3 and it will not survive the winter here, then bring it back outside in spring. Lavender is ready to harvest around mid-summer and will continue to produce all the way through late summer.
My favourite thing about lavender is the endless list of uses. The medicinal oils in lavender are known to be very calming and relaxing and can be used to make tea, bath, lotion, essential oil – just about anything you want. Lavender flowers are even edible and great for baked goods.
Purple Coneflower – Echinacea purpurea
- Perennial: Yes. Zones 3
- Planting area: Plant in perennial flower area.
- Edible / Medicinal: Yes – both.
This is a butterfly favourite. The plant grow tall sturdy flower stalks late in the season. It will take 2 years to bloom but worth the wait. It is perennial even our very cold zone 3.
Purple coneflower is a well known medicinal plant often called by it’s name Echinacea. It is known for being a powerful cold remedies and boosting the immune system. You can use the leaves, flowers and roots.
Conclusion
There are so many more flowers that you can explore, but these are my absolute favourite.
If you’re still in the planning phase for your garden or looking to make gradual additions, I highly recommend starting with the medicinal flowers first. Not only do they offer so many options and uses, but the ones I’ve listed are also very easy for beginners.
Companion planting flowers should be your priority if you need to attract pollinators or protect other plants in your garden.
If you are concerned with budget or space restrictions, I recommend starting with companions first, adding medicinal plants next, and little by little add in more perennials as you find space for them to save you time and money in future seasons.
I can’t wait to see what you decide to do with your garden, and if you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email! Happy gardening!
