Beautiful Bedfellows
Before you turn to harsh chemicals to solve your garden woes, consider planting these flowers and herbs. They make great bedfellows to improve your soil, increase propagation, and keep harmful insects at bay. Here are our top 8 clever companions for your garden.
Garlic
Plant with: Roses, raspberries, cucumbers, peas, lettuce, and celery.
Get these benefits: The most popular allium for keeping aphids off roses, garlic repels Japanese beetles and spider mites, too.
Sweet Alyssum
Plant with: Potatoes, broccoli, beans, corn, and eggplant.
Get these benefits: This sweet-smelling ground cover attracts predatory wasps and hoverflies, which devour aphids.
Borage
Plant with: Strawberries, cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes.
Get these benefits: Ward off tomato worms. This annual also adds trace minerals to soil, helping boost disease resistance in nearby plants.
Mint
Plant with: Tomatoes and cabbage.
Get these benefits: This quick-growing herb deters ants, fleas, aphids, cabbage moths, even rodents—plus it attracts earthworms, which help condition soil.
Alfalfa
Plant with: Lettuce, beans, and other legumes.
Get these benefits: Add important minerals, such as nitrogen, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium, deep into your soil with this hardy perennial.
Scented Marigold
Plant with: Everything!
Get these benefits: In dense clusters, this flower emits a substance that drives away harmful root-feeding nematodes. Near tomatoes, it can deter whiteflies.
Lavender
Plant with: Roses, alliums, and fruit trees.
Get these benefits: Discourage fleas and moths while drawing beneficial insects, such as bees, ladybugs, and praying mantises.
Nasturtium
Plant with: Cabbage, cucmbers, radishes, and fruit trees.
Get these benefits: Repel squash bugs, whiteflies, and cucumber beetles. The blooms also keep aphids from nibbling on fruit trees.