There are plenty of benefits to companion planting with flowers. Whether you’re growing for production, fresh eating, or just for fun, flowers will liven up your veggie patch and help your garden grow better, too.
Don’t you just love looking at a lush abundant garden overflowing with flowers in among the vegetables?
I love a good potager-style garden where flowers, vegetables, fruit, and herbs are all grown in beautiful and mutually beneficial harmony.
Years ago, I never really took much stock in companion planting. I didn’t think it would make much difference what you planted together. (I wasn’t a very good gardener back then.)
Comapnion planting with flowers isn’t a myth. It’s a real gardening strategy backed by science and the real life experience of gardeners everywhere. This one included.
When you grow flowers with vegetables, you create a biodiverse ecosystem where plants support one another, beneficial insects thrive and help you out, and your harvest is huge.
This post will show you exactly why companion planting works and how growing flowers with your vegetables creates a healthier, more productive garden.
Want a sneak peak at which flowers to plant? Check out my full list of 18 companion flowers for vegetables.
What Is Companion Planting?
Companion planting is growing two plants close together so they can benefit one another in some way. Some plants grow better when grown next to one another and some even enhance the flavor of certain vegetables.
Does Companion Planting Really Work?
Yes, though it’s important to understand what’s proven versus what’s traditional wisdom.
Research shows that biodiversity reduces pest problems. In general, polyculture (growing multiple crops together) versus monoculture show that having more types of plants increases beneficial insects.
Some companion planting strategies do have solid research backing and trap cropping is recommended by many gardeners to lure pests away from valuable crops.
We also know that having more pollinators present increases harvest. This is pretty plain to see for anyone who gardens or farms!
But a good portion of companion planting is based on gardener lore. Observations, biased and unbiased, practices handed down through generations of gardening families.
There’s a certain romanticism and magic about companion planting that I’m really drawn to.
And companion planting is just fun.
Seeing flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruit all together in a potager-style garden makes my brain tingle in a good way.
Whether or not every traditional companion plant pairing “works” as claimed, the overall diversity of planting many different species does consistently work better than single crops in evenly spaced rows.
Potager Gardening: If you’re curious, find my tips for designing a potager garden that combines flowers, herbs, and vegetables in a beautiful way.
9 Reasons Companion Planting with Flowers Works
All the benefits of companion planting with flowers!
1. Adds Beauty (Which Makes You a Better Gardener)
It’s obvious. Flowers make gardens beautiful.
The first thing strangers point at when they’re walking by are not my amazing grown-from-seed-in-my-basement onions but the towering sunflowers, or the bright zinnias.
Flowers create visual interest throughout the season.
Vegetable plants can look pretty plain, but the ebb and flow of different flowers coming in and out of bloom will make your garden more dynamic and interesting day after day.
Here’s why beauty matters more than you might have thought at first. We take better care of spaces we love looking at.
When your tomato bed is surrounded by happy zinnias and sweet alyssum, you’ll notice problems earlier because you’re there more often.
You’ll water more consistently because you want to see those flowers thrive. You’ll spend more time weeding and observing because you love how your garden looks.
Flowers can draw you into the garden and even make you stay a little longer than you planned!
A beautiful garden is one you’ll actually use and maintain. Beauty, then, is functional.
2. Attracts Pollinators
OK, this is a big deal. This is where companion planting flowers shifts from “nice to have” to “absolutely essential.”
First, look at how many bees are on this one sunflower!
Unfortunately, the flowers on our favorite vegetable plants aren’t the best flowers for attracting pollinators.
However, planting showy companion flowers overflowing with yummy nectar and pollen will attract pollinators of all kinds—like bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
It’s like putting up a billboard that says, “BEST NECTAR IN TOWN” to all the pollinators. And once they’ve found your garden, they’ll come back and get your vegetable flowers, too.
In addition, flowers support pollinator life by providing a place to rest and hide. When I harvest flowers in the morning I have to be careful that I don’t accidentally bring in flowers that have sleepy bees taking a nap among the flower petals.
Remember, pollinators need consistent food sources throughout the season. If you only grow vegetables, you’re offering limited, sporadic nectar.
By adding companion flowers that will bloom again and again, you’re providing our best garden friends with a reliable food source that will make them stick around all season.
Why wouldn’t you grow more flowers to help pollinators thrive?
See my list of 18 companion flowers for vegetables that will attract pollinators to your garden.
3. Increases Fruit Set
Attracting pollinators also increases the fruit set on your plants.
If you are growing any type of fruiting vegetable, then having pollinators in your garden is a must.
These include:
- tomatoes
- peppers
- all the squashes
- cucumbers
- watermelon
- cantaloupe/muskmelon
- eggplant, and more
Even self-pollinating vegetables like tomatoes and peppers will benefit from having bumblebees visit and pollinate the flowers.
Find out which flowers (and herbs and vegetables) I plant with my own tomatoes in this post.
I’ve had friends ask me for advice because they weren’t getting cucumbers or squash to set fruit in their brand-new gardens.
“The plants are covered in flowers,” they’d say, “but we’re not getting any cucumbers.”
As it turns out, these brand-new vegetable gardens were planted exclusively with vegetables and no flowers. Pollinators simply hadn’t discovered the cucumber and squash flowers in the new gardens.
Plant the flowers and the pollinators will come. Many pollinators means more vegetables to harvest.
Growing summer or winter squash this year? This post covers the best companion plants for squash and tips for dealing with pests like squash bugs and borers.
4. Attracts Predatory Insects
I feel like the first 3 reasons are compelling enough to plant companion flowers, but we’re barely halfway through all 9 reasons!
A fourth reason for companion planting flowers is to attract beneficial insects.
Companion plants can attract the natural enemies of pests or provide food and shelter for beneficial insects like hoverflies, ladybugs, soldier beetles, dragonflies, and wasps. These guys are a few friendlies you’ll want for the garden because they feed on other bugs including pests.
Hoverflies will lay eggs near aphid colonies. When eggs hatch, the larvae will devour the aphids. Ladybugs also feast on aphids. Parasitic wasps lay eggs in cabbage worms and hornworms, killing the pests from the inside. (I know… eww…)
Take a look below. Those white things on the tomato hornworm are eggs!
Many beneficial insects feed on pollen and nectar as adults, even if their babies eat the pests.
Flowers provide that food source. So planting flowers full of nectar and pollen next to pest-prone plants creates a habitat for pest-eating beneficial insects.
I’ll never forget the time I saw a wasp eating a cabbage moth caterpillar that was eating the broccoli in my garden. I literally cheered the wasp on!
Cabbage moths are one of my most hated pests. They’re voracious eaters, and they have torn my poor brassica seedlings down to nubs if I ever leave the garden uncovered.
Keep in mind, though, that if you spray your garden to eliminate pests, you will be killing beneficial insects, too.
It can be really hard to let nature run its course, but tolerating some pest damage now can lead to a more balanced ecosystem later.
Use barriers like insect netting to keep pests off your prized vegetables.
Or allow pests to have a sacrificial plant and then get rid of the plant and pests with it.
If you can be patient, planting plenty of companion flowers and not spraying pesticides or herbicides will pay off in the long run.
Best flowers for beneficial insects: Sweet alyssum, dill (flowering), calendula, yarrow, cosmos. See the full list in my companion flowers guide.
5. Increases Biodiversity
Adding flowers to any garden will increase biodiversity.
When we plant only one type of plant in an area, we create a “monoculture.” Growing different plants together creates a polyculture, which leads to biodiversity.
Biodiversity is crucial for our gardens because it helps disrupt pest life cycles and promotes beneficial insects.
Crop diversity also improves soil health.
The more varieties of plants, animals, fungi, and insects we can support on our land, the better our gardens will be.
Different plants have different root depths to access nutrients from various soil layers. Different plant families suppport different soil microorganisms.
Pests have a harder time finding their favorite plants when scents and visuals are mixed.
And disease spreads more slowly when host plants aren’t right next to each other.
Monocultures are vulnerable to pests and disease because all the plants are the same, while diverse systems are more resilient.
Honestly, it’s just more fun to be in a garden that is full of diverse life. You never know what you’ll discover from day to day. A giant mushroom? Baby praying mantises? A young robin learning to fly?
Life attracts more life. And that’s a beautiful thing
6. Better Crop Rotation
Companion flowers are a great way to rotate crop families and prevent disease and nutrient deficiencies from occurring year after year.
It’s important to rotate crop families and grow a variety of plants to keep the soil from becoming depleted.
But if you have limited space, rotating through just vegetables gets repetitive fast. You’ll run out of options.
Being able to add flowers from a different plant family than your usual vegetables (think nightshades, alliums, and brassicas) gives you more flexibility.
You may want to plant tomatoes in one spot, cucumbers there the next year, and cosmos there the year after that.
Flowers also add different nutrients back to the soil. Tomatoes and squash are heavy feeders that deplete nitrogen, but many flowers are happy to grow in poor soil and give a little back in the process.
To be honest, I’m not very strict about crop rotation. As long as I’m adding good-quality compost, and not seeing heavy pest pressure or having disease issues, I have no problem with planting the same crop family in the same spot the following year.
But flowers definitely give me more options when I do want to rotate, and they help maintain soil health between finicky crops.
7. For Edible Flowers
This is a bonus benefit, but a fun one.
There are plenty of companion flowers that are edible.
It can be tough to find organically grown edible flowers to buy from the store, and if you do find them, they are expensive for just a few flowers.
So the solution is to grow your own!
Borage flowers, for example, tastes like cucumbers. Pineapple sage has pineapple-scented leaves that you can use in cooking. Lavender can be made into tea or used in baked goods. Violas and pansies also are edible and can brighten up spring salads.
It’s tough to beat the uniqueness of serving a salad topped with pansies or adding lavender to shortbread cookies.
8. Decreases Weed Pressure by Acting as Mulch
Mother Nature is modest and will cover her bare soil one way or another. Would you rather have her grow weeds or would you rather plant beautiful and beneficial flowers instead?
Keeping your soil covered by growing companion flowers will prevent weeds from taking hold. While I do use comfrey as mulch occasionally, living mulch is better because it constantly renews itself and the plant roots form a community that helps feed soil bacteria over time.
Use flowers as a living mulch to keep your soil covered and shaded.
My favorite flower to use as living mulch is sweet alyssum. Sweet alyssum has shallow roots, grows low, and spreads. It also smells wonderful (like honey) and flowers from late spring to the end of fall or whenever we get a hard frost.
I don’t know about you, but I would 100% rather have sweet alyssum filling in bare spots in the garden over weeds!
9. Doubles as Cut Flowers
Many of the best companion flowers also make great cut flowers.
Zinnias, celosia, sunflowers, and dahlias are all great companion flowers and cut flowers.
As an added bonus, cut-and-come again flowers like zinnias, celosia, and cosmos, will flower more when cut regularly.
Fresh flowers and better vegetable harvests… how could you say no?!
If you’re interested in growing a bouquet like this one, make sure to check out my post on 10 easy cut flowers for beginners.
How to Actually Do This
Ready to grow companion flowers?
Try this: Pick 2 or 3 companion flowers from my big list. I personally recommend sweet alyssum, marigolds, and zinnias.
Plant them: Stick them between vegetables, use flowers as borders, or interplant them throughout your beds. See my companion planting for tomatoes guide for specific examples.
Observe: Note what happens. More bees? Fewer pests? Better harvests? What works in your garden might be slightly different than mine, so take your own garden notes.
Expand next year: Add a few more flower varieties. Try different combinations. Keep what works, skip what doesn’t.
Be patient: Building a diverse ecosystem takes time. The first year is all about creating a foundation. The next year builds off of that, and the third year, your garden will be buzzing with life.
Grow Vegetables and Flowers Together for a More Productive Garden
Companion planting with flowers isn’t complicated. You don’t need to know everything or follow rigid rules.
Start with a few flowers you love, plant them with your veggies, and see what happens.
I love seeing the flowers and pollinators from companion planting, and I hope you’ll love the outcome in your own garden, too.
I’m willing to bet you’ll see more pollinators, your garden will look amazing, and you’ll enjoy spending time there more and more.
And you’ll probably be harvesting more vegetables too.
Ready to get started?