Using flowers grown from seed as companion plants

Using Flowers from Seed as Companion Plants

Gardeners have long believed that putting certain plants together, usually flowers with vegetables, creates positive associations – known as companion planting. Let's look at how you can use your flowers grown from seed to provide benefits for biodiversity and potentially even to other plants.

As well as plugging gaps in borders, filling pots and creating a cutting garden, the other way I use plants I grow from seed is in my vegetable garden as companion planting.

There are lots of flowers that are commonly grown alongside vegetables, following traditional wisdom, which alleges that growing certain plants together can provide natural benefits.

• These may include better pollination, deterring pests, encouraging natural predators of pests and plants providing physical support to each other.

I put as many flowers as I can among my vegetables because not only does it look lovely but it also benefits the crops:

1. attracts beneficial insects such as hoverflies and other pollinators

• hoverflies prey on aphids

1. can attract pests away from vegetable crops

Companion planting for me is all about bringing in biodiversity. Many crops – flowering vegetables such as squash, cucumbers etc. – need to be pollinated in order to crop.

These are some of the plants I use as companion plants:

• zinnias along edge of beds
• nasturtiums among veg
• I leave plants such as poppies, Linaria (purple toadflax) and Verbena bonariensis to self-seed
• I let parsley go onto flower

A lot of reasoning behind companion planting goes back years and is almost folklore. These are four well-known companion planting combinations.

1. Calendula with brassicas. Calendula is a well-known companion plant that's really easy to grow from seed. I usually edge my beds with it, but this year put it in my cutting patch.

1. Basil with tomatoes. The strongly-scented basil is said to repel aphids and whitefly.

1. Nasturtiums and cucurbits (cucumbers and squash). The scent of nasturtium oils is said to repel pests.

1. Alliums, including onions and chives, with carrots. The scent of the alliums repels carrot fly.

Companion planting looks beautiful and if you've grown an excess of flowers, the vegetable plot is a great place to slot in extra seedlings.

Further reading

Three ways to use companion planting – RHS

Plant Directory

Allium species and cultivars

Onions, garlic and ornamental onions

Bulbous, herbaceous hardy perennials

Amaryllidaceae

Calendula officinalis

Common marigold

Hardy annual or biennial

Asteraceae

Lunaria annua

Honesty

Hardy annual or biennial

Brassicaceae

Petroselinum crispum

Parsley

Semi-evergreen biennial herb

Apiaceae

Tropaeolum majus cultivars

Nasturtiums

Half-hardy annuals

Tropaeolaceae

Verbena bonariensis

Purple top

Herbaceous hardy perennial

Verbenaceae