Growing flowers in garden is a must! Growing ones you can eat? Even better. Try these safe to eat favorites in your garden.
1) Nasturtiums
If you only have room for one edible flower in your growing space, make it this one. Nasturiums are an easy growing, low-maintenance plant and every part of it is edible (although I don't recommend eating the seeds). It will happily grow up a trellis or a nearby fence making it a wonderful option for a small area. Sometimes it's planted as a trailing plant, spilling out of planters and cascading over the sides of a raised bed. It tends to prefer a spot that doesn't get the harshest sun and where the soil will stay moist between waterings.
In our garden at home, I have them planted along the back fence. At school, we have them growing up the chain link fence between the garden and the kindergarten yard. Not only are the plants and the foliage beautiful, but the flowers are delicious! Whenever I tell someone to try one, they are always pleasantly surprised at the flavor these little flowers pack. It's kind of like eating a really thinly sliced radish but with a small kick of spicy pepper. This makes them a great way to dress up salads, decorate plates, or just eat freely right from the plant. No preparation is necessary to begin enjoying these lovely flowers.
Nasturiums come in a wide variety of colors, and you can create endless combinations for dramatic effect. We swear the different colors taste different too! Plants will continue to bloom all summer long and into the winter, but frost will knock them back. Even so, if you leave it alone it will reseed itself easily, so plan ahead for a spot you don't mind leaving them year after year and they'll never disappoint.
2) Violas
Violas are another contender for top flower to have in a school garden, and really any garden would benefit from having these guys around. Their small size and multi-blooming nature makes them easy to fit into almost any growing scenario. Have a balcony garden? Low sunlight? Just one container? Grab yourself a few packs of Violas and you'll be happy as a clam. In our school garden, we grow them during the long wet winters and they bring some much welcome color and excitement to the gray gloomy days. Not only are they just stinkin' adorable, they are also perfectly edible with a mild crunch. No preparation is required to start enjoying them. Just pop them in a salad or salsa, place one on top of an iced cookie, or add a few as a garnish, for a guaranteed crowd pleaser.
They are also excellent flowers for making purple simple syrups that you can use to spruce up your next cocktail, tea, or lemonade.
And I know this list is all about eating the flowers, but I have to mention that these guys work really well as pressed flowers for many arts and crafts too! Like these flower cards we make for Mother's Day, adding yet another wonderful reason to keep some of these around.
Calendula (Pot Marigold)
Calendula, aka Pot Marigolds, are typically used as a medicinal plant to treat all matter of skin conditions but a personal favorite is to use them to make a quick and simple spray to treat bug bites. Just pop a couple flowers in a spray bottle with some water and after a few minutes you'll have a great tool to fight that itch! My favorite place to plant these is on the edges of our vegetable beds. They stay in a tight low, formation, reseed themselves forever, and are very low maintenance. They'll happily grow in almost any light situation from full, hot sun to light shade under a tree. Planted at the edges of your veggie beds, they'll provide a nice pop of color and a welcome home for visiting pollinators.
As an edible flower, they do best plucked as a head and then broken apart into individual petals. We sprinkle them as a natural confetti onto iced cookies, salads, or to garnish stir fries.
If you're interested in making them into a tea to tap into their medicinal power, pluck the whole flower and dry them hanging upside down for a couple of weeks, then break the heads into individual petals and save in an airtight container. You can make a tea using only the petals but more often they're added to other tea leaves to make an herbal blend. We have also used the flowers to make sun tea in our garden!
4) Borage
If you plant borage in your garden, you'll quickly learn that bees are absolutely obsessed with it. Why? Because this plant produces a deliciously sweet nectar that bees can't seem to get enough of. If you pick the flower and put your tongue on the center, you'll see what I mean about sweet! We love having borage in our garden to attract pollinators, but the multi-headed blue blooms also double as delicious additions to all sorts of garden recipes.
Tasting a bit like a sweet cucumber, borage flowers are perfect for adding to a salad, topping a cupcake, or throwing into a summer salsa for a vibrant blue pop. The hairy stems mean these guys are very drought tolerant and will do very well in even the most neglected spots in your garden.
Borage has a tendency to get weedy so you may need to manage it a bit to keep it out of your pathways and other growing spaces, but don't let that stop you from considering adding this to your next garden plan!
5) Chamomile
Chamomile is such a charming little flower, you can't help but smile when you see it! It has the same effect on kids visiting the garden too. My favorite spot for it is around the base of broccoli or cauliflower plants as a way to fill the empty space underneath. It's small stature is one of its best features, it's one of the easiest plants to tuck into any little crack or crevice of growing space you might have. In cooler climates, it's even sometimes grown between the cracks of a stone pathway releasing its sweet fragrance for any passerby. That delicious smell also makes this plant a great option for a sensory garden!
The flowers are a nice addition to bouquets and pressed flower crafts, but chamomile is most known for its calming properties as a soothing tea. You can pick off just the flower heads and dry them for long term storage throughout the cooler months. As you remove the heads, it will encourage new blooms to form, so harvesting often will mean more delightful flowers. By the end of the winter you will probably have enough to turn these into a wonderful spring tea for your students.
Have you grown any of these in your garden? What worked best for you!
Disclaimer: This information is meant for educational purposes and not as a stand in for actual medical advice, please do not eat any plants that you are unfamiliar with and consult a health professional for any medical advice.
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