8 Flowers To Grow With Vegetables

Random Dialogues
2 min readMay 10, 2021

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“Hold off with the calendula flowers please mum!” my 16 year old said. I thought he’d enjoy a few sprinkled on his morning spicy mish mash of eggs, homegrown parsley and chillis.

Apparently not.

He’s got exams for the next two weeks.

I’ve taken the day off, so after the teens headed off, I sat to hatch some outdoor plans. This is a blog about “8 Flowers To Grow With Vegetables” not just to attract the bees, bugs, and birds but also for splashes of colour in the beds and on plates.

The image above was our allotment in 2016, we’d just returned from our 2-year family adventure in Tanzania. Whilst we were there our lovely Nepalese friend Nal and his family looked after the plot. You will note the jumble of veg, flowers, and abundance of weeds.

Our allotment journey started in 2007 when the children were 1 and 2 years old. It was a space to dig for worms, learn where food comes from and hang out with a multi-cultural community. The kids knew where the dock leaves grew, which trees to climb and wild cats to cuddle. I share updates about our allotment over on Facebook and document here too: A Lot Meant

In Africa, my husband Paul created a “shamba” next to our house. There’s a photo below, along with a video I’ve made about creating a flowering climbing bean wigwam!

In the meantime, here’s 8 flowers to grow alongside vegetables -

calendula officinalis

dahlias

cosmos

nasturtium

lavender

globe artichokes

chives

sunflowers

I’d also add comfrey to the list as the bees adore it, take care to get the correct non-invasive variety.

What would you add to the list?

Paul on our Shamba whilst we were living in Tanzania. I’d taken my class for a tour around the school searching for food, including the banana and papaya trees. Paul spoke with them about the food he’d grown. Can’t see any flowers!

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Jane Tyson
Teacher

#flowersinmyvegetablegarden

#flowerswithveg

#allotmentlife

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