Flowers You Should Plant in Your Vegetable Garden

Often when we think of gardens we think of neat rows of vegetables and an entirely different area for flowers. While this may be great for your landscaping design, the truth is those flowers can be just as useful in the vegetable garden.

These flowers are worth growing in your vegetable garden. They can attract beneficial insects, repel or even trap the less than welcome insects, and help nourish your soil so your entire garden can flourish.

The Best Flowers to Add to Your Vegetable Garden

Marigolds

Marigolds are known for being an amazing choice for flowers to grow in your vegetable garden. This gardener’s favorite can help repel deer, rabbits, and unwanted insects like aphids while attracting pollinators to your garden.

Marigolds are less often known for but are great at repelling squash bugs, thrips, tomato hornworms, and whiteflies.

Marigolds can help several plants, including tomatoes, potatoes, and squash, thrive. As an added bonus, these are edible and make a great addition to summer salads.

Calendula

Calendula is also known as pot marigold and is another great choice for vegetable gardens. This herb is great for making skin-soothing products like homemade soaps and creams while having the same benefits in the garden as other marigold varieties. Plant this variety with tomatoes and beans in the garden.

Borage

Borage is a wild and unruly flowering herb with edible flowers and leaves. This plant may look a bit wild for your landscaping, but it grows amazingly well in the vegetable garden, where it can attract bees to your garden to help keep your garden well pollinated.

This simple herb goes well in summer salads and has a light cucumber taste. Interestingly these flowers change color as their pollen is used up, telling bees when they no longer can find food in these flowers, often sending the bees to other flowers in your garden. Borage is a great companion plant for tomatoes as it can help to repel the dreaded hornworm.

Cosmos

Cosmos makes a great addition to the vegetable garden as they attract lacewings, a small green insect that loves to eat aphids. Plant these among or around your plants that tend to have issues with aphids like green beans to help control these pests.

Lavender

Lavender is a great herb to grow in and around your vegetable garden. This flowering herb has many uses around the house and can help repel unwanted insects from your garden and entertainment spaces near your garden. The small yet fragrant flowers of lavender easily attract pollinators, including bees and butterflies.

Moths, deer, and even mice are commonly repelled by the strong fragrance of fresh blooming lavender, making it a truly useful plant for your vegetable garden.

Lavender can be directly planted with brussel sprouts, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage to help protect these plants without affecting their growth or flavor.

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are a great flowering herb that grows well in hanging pots or along garden beds. These brightly colored flowers can add character to your garden while attracting pollinators so your vegetable garden can thrive and produce a great yield.

Nasturtiums make a great edging crop that helps to stop aphids and other unwanted insects from reaching your vegetables. Plant nasturtiums with broccoli, cabbage, beets, pumpkin, and zucchini to help attract pollinators and repel slugs and blackflies.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers make a great natural trellis for climbing plants like beans and peas. As an added bonus, these tall flowers also produce edible seeds and attract bees and butterflies to your garden.

Zinnias

Zinnias are great at attracting bees and butterflies to your garden, but they are also helpful for attracting hummingbirds that not only help to pollinate your garden but they also eat small insects like aphids and ants in your garden, helping to protect your vegetables.

Sweet peas

These colorful climbing flowers make a great companion plant for climbing beans and peas.

Sweet peas attract pollinators and help increase your crop of these high-yield fast-growing plants. Alternate between your green beans and peas on a trellis behind your tomatoes to maximize your space and the yield of your entire garden.

Sweet alyssum

Sweet alyssum can be grown with onion, chives, broccoli, and carrots. This flowering herb is great for attracting pollinators and helpful insects like lacewings, ladybugs, and predatory wasps to your garden.

You can use sweet alyssum around your garden as a ground cover or living mulch to help snuff out weeds and trap moisture in the soil.

Lupins

Lupins are a bee-friendly nitrogen-fixing plant. You can plant these like you would green beans and other lingams to help heavy feeders thrive and rebuild soil while attracting beneficial insects to your garden.

This can make a great flower for growing in your vegetable garden, and like many other great flowers for your garden, lupins attract a wide range of beneficial wildlife to your garden.

Comfrey

Comfrey is great for growing in shady areas of your garden to help fill in space and take advantage of its deep taproot that helps to pull the nutrients up out of the deeper parts of the soil so your other plants can use it. This useful herb is a great addition to your vegetable garden.

Chamomile

Chamomile makes a great addition to the vegetable garden. Its natural mold and mildew resistance can help protect your plants from these common ailments to help keep your vegetable garden strong and healthy.

Chamomile can be a great companion plant for cabbage, onions, beans, cucumbers, broccoli, and kale.

Clover

Clover is a great ground cover for areas around your vegetable garden and around raised garden beds. The blooms attract pollinators which in turn will pollinate your vegetable garden helping to greatly increase the yield of your garden.

As an added benefit, clover doesn’t need to be mowed like grass, making it a great low-maintenance ground cover option, so you have more time to focus on your garden.

Planting Flowers with Vegetables

The best flowers to add to your vegetable garden are the ones that will attract beneficial insects and pollinators or naturally repel pests, while also beautifying your garden space.