Vegetable gardens need a few things to be productive: sun, soil, water and… pollinators. Oh yes, even vegetable plants require pollination in order to produce healthy vegetables. So attracting as many pollinators into your vegetable garden is absolutely crucial if you want to end up with an abundance of crops. The best possible way you can do this, is by planting more flowers.
But what flowers work best in a vegetable garden and how many do you need to plant to make a difference?
Some flowers have additional benefits to a vegetable garden than simply attracting in those pollinators. Some flowers are edible, adding an extra crop to your list, some flowers make superb cut flowers and others are great for companion planting. Here are my top flowers to plant in a vegetable garden, and the benefits they hold:
CALENDULA
In my opinion, no allotment garden is complete without some calendulas.
Pollinators love them thanks to their big, open flower heads making it easy for them to get to the centre. They also have great medicinal properties, helping with a variety of skin problems, simply pick the flower heads and pop into a little oil. The petals are edible and make a great addition to any salad and you can even make tea with them!
To grow calendulas, I’ve always just sprinkled the seeds directly into the soil around April/May time. The more flower heads you pick, the more that grow. It’s that simple!
DAHLIAS
Dahlia flowers are a bit of a vegetable garden staple flower! I don’t think I’ve seen an allotment site without at least one dahlia plant growing on someones plot! This is because they make sure great cut flowers. Their long stems and beautiful colour combinations make them perfect for frequent cutting, as well as their long bloom time. My dahlias appear sometime in June and go on flowering until well into November!
Just be warned, the pom pom varieties aren’t so great for pollinators as it’s harder for them to get to the middle of the flower.
BORAGE
Borage is a bushy plant which flowers for a long time and is a well loved flower by bees and butterflies! I plant mine in between vegetable rows to attract as many bees as possible into my patch. You can also eat borage flowers, jut snip them off and chuck into a salad or decorate a cake with them!
Quick tip, borage spreads like wildfire! It’s beautiful, but keep on top of it!
SUNFLOWERS
Not only are these incredibly loved by all kinds of pollinators, they have an array of uses for us. The flowers are wonderful as cut flowers in a vase. The seeds can be collected for next year, or roasted and eaten! Sprinkle them over porridge for a bit of a crunch!
There are so many varieties of sunflower you can grow, and they are all really easy. Not all of them grow really tall and some of them flower multiple times along the stem.
TULIPS
Tulips are such an easy flower to grow and early pollinators will thank you for them! Just push the bulbs into the ground in the Autumn time for a spectacular display in the spring time. They fill up raised beds that might otherwise be empty early on in the season and inject some much needed colour into your garden.
MARIGOLDS
Marigolds are brilliant as companion flowers in your vegetable garden. Traditionally they are grown next to tomato plants as a deterrent to white fly, who don’t like the smell. Unfortunately, slugs do like marigolds, so they will require a little protection!
DANDELIONS
Yes, those little yellow weeds that spring up everywhere! Well, did you know that not only do pollinators absolutely love them, they are also edible and delicious! Try snipping off the petals to add to a salad, or dig up the root and boil it. Dandelions are easy to grow, you’ll probably find them without even purposely putting down any seed, and the good news is, they will require pretty much no help from you to grow!
ZINNIAS
I love zinnias. They are so beautiful, like little lollipops popping up from the ground. They make brilliant cut flowers and pollinators love them too. You can start these in modules in about April time, or you can just scatter the seeds on the soil in May. They are loved by slugs, so protection is vital.
SWEET PEAS
These sweet smelling beauties are so wonderful as cut flowers. They don’t mind a bit of cold either so you can start them in pretty much any month and plant them out before the last frost too. They love to climb, so building a structure is vital. Keep picking them regularly for continuous flowers for months!
