6 Types of Flowers to Grow in Your Vegetable Garden – 2024 Guide

Most people think of flowers being a nuisance in a vegetable garden. They try to remove them and clean the garden out. But they cannot be more wrong as flowers have all sorts of beneficial effects on a vegetable garden.

Dean Hudson from Flower Delivery emphasizes the effects flowers have on a vegetable garden. He says that flowers are a way to control beneficial insects in a vegetable garden. In turn, beneficial insects are able to destroy the pests that are actually damaging your crops. This works equally well for the upper as well as the underground part of the garden.

There are more benefits to flower in a vegetable garden except these. Flowers also are useful to make the ecosystem of the garden more biodiverse and make it low maintenance, essentially leaving you with less work.

But which are the flowers that you can grow to help you achieve this? Most people grow flowers around the perimeter of a vegetable garden. But here are some flowers that can help you achieve all the beneficial effects for your garden that you can plant among your crops.

1. Borage

Borage
source: pinterest

The Borage flower is a flower usually used in a cottage garden. But since it is a bit messy to keep there it serves far better as a part of a vegetable garden. More so, the flower is completely edible, the leaves and the flower as well, and has a subtle, cucumber flavor to it.

The flower serves as a beacon for bees and helps with the pollination of a garden. Also, these flowers are fast growers and can be directly seeded. After you do so for the first time, they tend to reseed themselves, so you will not need to do any extra work after you grow them for the first time.

2. Calendula

Calendula
source: gardeningknowhow.com

Calendula is a multipurpose flower for a vegetable garden. Besides being beautiful, a cheerful, daisy-like flower, it exudes a sticky tap that traps some pests and keeps them away from other crops that you are growing.

But besides being great at trapping and keeping all the pests away from it also helps with pollination. Namely, Calendula has the ability to attract many pollinators and beneficial insects like hoverflies, ladybugs and green lacewings that can help with pollination and clearing all the unwanted insects. Finally, Calendula can also serve as a cover crop that you can use during the winter to keep all the soil in place.

3. Cosmos

Cosmos
source: instagram

A Cosmo is a very beautiful and fast growing annual flower. They come in different bright colors but the best choice for a vegetable garden is the orange-colored one. The function that this flower serves best is to attract bees and green lacewings to help with the pest population of your garden.

The insects that these flowers attract are delicate in appearance but are gluttonous eaters and have the ability to clear off an entire garden from any soft-bodied insects. Green Lacewings are considered a very beneficial type of an insect for any garden, so if you make your garden their home it will benefit it tenfold.

4. California poppy

California poppy
source: greenmylife.in

Planting California poppy in your vegetable garden can have a beneficial and healthy effect on it. First of all, this is a fast-growing flower and has really strong and deep roots. Thanks to this ability the California poppy is able to soften and clay the soil making it beneficial for growing crops.

Furthermore, this flower also attracts all the favorable insects you need to protect your garden. There is a special feature that the California poppy also has and that is being able to close up when it is supposed to rain. So you essentially have a warning any time it is supposed to rain.

5. Lavender

Lavender
source: pinterest

Lavender is considered as one of the most beautiful flowers with a heavenly smell. But what us humans find beautiful many insects and animals find repulsing. Thus the smell that lavender gives of is very nice to the senses of a human being but disgusting to some insects.

It has been determined that a vegetable garden with lavender has fewer ticks in it. Also, cabbage moths are not fans of lavender and will stir off of it. But what the greatest mystery of lavender is the ability to fend off some animals. Lavender repels deer and even mice, so there is a lesser chance of your crops being decimated by some larger creatures.

6. German Chamomile

German Chamomile
source: thetutuguru.com.au

Chamomile is often regarded as a kind of flower used for tea, but it has another great purpose. It can serve as a way to help your vegetable garden as well. First of all, it is excellent at attracting pollinators and other beneficial insects which help to protect your garden from pests.

But what you probably didn’t know was that the German Chamomile has deep roots that have the ability to sap out a lot of nutrients. So when the season is finished just cut the extra plant and let it fertilize the ground with all the nutrient-rich materials it has.