Companion Planting 101 || How to Design a Garden that REPELS PESTS & DOUBLES your harvest!

Did you know that there are compounds within the basil plant that repel aphids, thrips, mosquitoes, flies, and so many more? And that planting your basil next to your prized tomato plant can act as a natural insect repeller? Basil also attracts insects both to pollinate your tomatoes and to eat any of the pests that are bothering them. And if you don't like basil, mint, lavender, and marigolds all have similar properties. So if you want to use less harsh chemicals in your garden, but you are constantly fighting pesky pests, try companion planting and let nature do the work for you. Companion planting is using the properties of one plant to benefit the properties of another. And while we generally hear about companion planting in terms of vegetable gardening, it's not just relegated to the kitchen garden. You can use companion planting to beautiful effect in your ornamental garden beds as well. Cottage gardening is kind of perfect for these practices because in the cottage garden, your ornamentals and your edibles sit cheek by jowl right next to each other. I love this topic of companion planting. And later in the video, I'm going to be sharing some examples that I know you've never heard of before. Welcome to our cottage garden. My name is Anna Fable. In today's video, I'm going to break down everything you need to know about companion planting. I'm going to give you a few combinations for beginners. I'll share how you can create a dazzling garden space that is essentially effortless to maintain with tons of plant combinations. And make sure you stick around to the end because I'm going to be designing a companion garden that's beautiful and low maintenance. And I'll do that in real time with you. So stick around to the end. Make sure to like this video if you like and subscribe if you're not already. It really does help us out. With companion planting, it can feel really overwhelming. And I'm a bit of a storyteller. I'm a writer. I love to think about things in terms of stories. So when you think about companion planting, you're thinking about relationships, right? So in companion planting, the way I like to break it down is three categories. And like any story about relationships, there are different dynamics, right? Different relational dynamics. So category number one is one-way companionship. So let's take two of my favorite plants. For me, dill and kale have a beautiful love story. Dill lovingly protects kale with this compound that it has that repels insects very similar to basil, particularly aphids, which wreak utter havoc on our kale plants. But this love story isn't done. When dill goes to flower, not only does the whimsical umbilifer look like a perfect adornment to your stalwart kale soldiers, but these flowers also attract predatory insects that can go after those aphids as well. Any of the aphids that have still gotten onto your kale plant, those flowers of the dill will go ahead and take care of those as well. And not only aphids, but another very popular one for all of our brassicas is, you know, the cabbage white butterfly. And the predatory insects that are attracted to dill are going to go after that as well. And still more romantic in this love story, the mere presence of dill beside your fresh kale seedlings is said to boost the robustness of the kale. What a sweet little love story. Now dill does have a similar effect with other brassicas, like I said, like cabbages and broccoli and Brussels sprouts and things like that. But we won't say too much more in case kale gets jealous. So that's our first relationship, one-way relationship. There are many examples of this, but dill and kale is a great one to start with. And the second relationship dynamic that we want to talk about in terms of companion planting is mutual companionship. So as the name would suggest, this is where all of the plants that are involved in this planting benefit mutually from each other. The best example of this is what's known as the three sisters, where corn, beans, and squash are grown together, each providing benefits to the others. Corn provides a natural trellis for the beans to climb and a visual deterrent for some squash insects. So it benefits both. Beans fix nitrogen in the soil, enriching it for the corn and the squash. And squash suppresses the weeds, shades the soil, and helps retain moisture, all beneficial for the other plants. The Iroquois and the Cherokees developed this horticultural technique, and they were the ones to name the method the three sisters, because they nurture each other. These different plants nurture each other like family when planted together. So they would plant corn in small clusters, and then they would spread beans throughout, and then they would kind of freckle the squash throughout a planting area. And they just noticed how well all of these worked together. So that's mutual companionship. And the last one, it's very dramatic, but it's sacrificial love. A great example of this is planting nasturtiums next to brassicas as a sacrifice to the hungry cabbage white caterpillar. And the great thing is, because nasturtiums kind of grow so vigorously, they kind of bury their dead, even with the leaves, and so you'll barely notice the damage. And then your entire looks healthier and more productive as a whole. So companion planting 101. First of all, again, I know this can be a little bit overwhelming, so I want you to just kind of try out certain groupings and pairings and see how they work. The thing that I want you to take away from this is that there's nothing scary about companion planting. There have been some sort of myths and some lore and things about, you can't plant this next to that, or you can't do this next to this. You are the consummate student of your garden. You are always observing what's going on. And so in a way, you really are already doing this. You know, you pay attention when a plant is not happy in an area and then you move it, or maybe you take it out and you try something else. A great example of how you're already doing companion planting is you are planting your hostas in the shade of a tree. You know, the hosta is benefiting from the shade that the tree, the other plant, the tree, provides for it. And when you plant roses, clematis, or climbing hydrangeas at the base of a tree, that's companion planting too. The tree is serving as the stake or the trellis upon which those climbers will climb. So it's really not as complicated as a lot of people want to make it. It's just important to recognize that the more that we know about the properties of the individual plant, the better we'll be able to kind of give those plants the right kind of conditions and pair them better to make that perfect companion planting. And there have been so many studies done on companion planting, and the scientific research about good companion planting far outweighs any research on bad companion planting. So please, you really can't go wrong here. And if you do, you mess up in some way. It's always fixable in the garden. So that's it. Number one takeaway, don't be scared. Don't be scared to get it wrong. So now that we have those kind of understandings of the dynamics between the different plants, those different companionship relationships, now we can sort of think about the ways that individual plants impact, affect, and benefit each other. So the first one is one that you've probably used before and noticed, is attracting pollinators into your garden. We talk about this all the time. We hear about this. So you have a general idea of what that means. Well, that's really companion planting because you're attracting pollinators into your garden in order to pollinate a different plant. So these two plants are then serving as companions, right? That is companion planting. So planting for beneficial insects, that's companion planting. And so for this first example, we're specifically talking about maybe planting zinnias or salvias, things that the pollinators just absolutely love near your tomatoes or your beans, your things that need that pollination in order to better pollinate those crops. So our second example is attracting an insect in order to remove a pest. So planting a wasp or ladybug attractor next to one of your plants that really struggles with aphids is fantastic for that because then that will help to reduce the aphid population on that crop. Another way that plants can benefit each other, we spoke about at the beginning of the video, but it's using the chemical compounds within a plant to benefit the plants around it. So for example, with basil and tomatoes, basil has this chemical compound that is repellent to certain pests. And so planting those side by side is a really great companion pairing. It's probably the most famous and the most popular is tomatoes and basil. So now whether or not these plants like dill, for example, actually emit this chemical compound and the insects can actually sense that and then they stay away or that they land on the plant, they don't like the plant once they're in contact with it, and then they stay away from the other crop altogether. This is sort of debatable. Some sources say yes, some sources say no, but what I've noticed is that our crop of tomatoes looks, tastes, seems so much healthier and so much better when I plant it next to basil. Next up is using a plant to support another plant, like our example of the, you know, the beans and the corn from the three sisters. Plants can also provide ground cover. Alyssum is great for this because it's a fantastic weed suppressant. It, you know, kind of crawls all along the ground. It'll bloom all season long for us and smells really lovely. It's a beautiful flower and it attracts lots of beneficials to the garden. And with ground covers, you know, they help to retain moisture just like mulch. The other ways that plants can benefit are sun and soil needs. For the soil needs, beans fix nitrogen in the soil, as we spoke about, which is beneficial for a host of plants, you know, corn, root vegetables like carrots and potatoes, fruit, and so many more. And for the sun needs, you know, planting, let's say, astilbes underneath your hydrangeas. That's a great way of the astilbes benefiting from the protection that the hydrangea is giving them from the harsh sun, particularly in the afternoon. So once again, we can use companion planting to greater effect once we understand the certain properties of each individual plant. And, you know, you can find many plants that have these sort of pest-repelling properties and you can plant them next to your other plants. This is fantastic, not only because pests tend to nibble away your favorite plants, but these pests, a lot of them, they carry a number of different diseases that you just don't want to invite into your other garden plants. So it's a really good idea for the whole health of your garden to start just thinking about a few of these combinations. So let's jump into those now. Here are a few to try in your garden, and these work even if you're a beginner. So let's take our most famous example, basil and tomatoes. Just try this in your garden next year. Now, make sure you're giving enough space for these plants, but planting your basil near your tomatoes is a great way of doing this. You can plant your basil. What I do, I have a three by five foot beds in the vegetable patch, and I will just sort of plunk my basil plants at the end of each of those beds of tomatoes, and then I'll put my tomatoes three on each side so that as the tomatoes grow up the trellis, the basil just kind of forms on the outer edges. And again, if you don't like basil, you can do this with marigolds as well. They have very similar properties to the basil. They're going to attract the right insects in to pollinate the tomatoes and also to keep the other pests at bay. So the first example is tomatoes and basil or tomatoes and marigolds. Number two is borage and peppers. Now this might not be one you've heard of before, but this is a great example of companion planting. So borage repels certain pests like the tomato hornworm, which affects peppers as well. Borage attracts pollinators and the beautiful blue flowers are edible, so they're really a fantastic pairing. The third one I'd like you to try is kale and dill. Trust me, this is just such a beautiful pairing. It looks gorgeous in the garden because the kale leaves are... I like to use dino kale, lacinato kale. I use curly kale too, but lacinato is one of my favorites. And I think it cooks really, really well and it's just a nice flavor. It's very rich. But the way those plants look, it's just like these beautiful spikes of gorgeous leaves and they're this dark, kind of dark blue color. And then on the outside of the bed, you might want to plant some dill plants. And dill has this very ethereal, very wispy foliage, bright zingy green. So next to that deep, dark blue-green foliage of the kale, it's really beautiful. And then let your kale, your dill go to seed, have these little flowers on the edge of your vegetable bed. That's a beautiful pairing. And all of the examples that I gave before about how that'll help to keep your kale crop really healthy. Next one I'd like for you to try is nasturtiums and broccoli. You could do nasturtiums and broccoli. You could do nasturtiums and cauliflower, nasturtiums and brussels sprouts, nasturtiums and cabbages. So this plant combination will confuse the hungry cabbage whites and they will go after your nasturtiums and not just your brassicas. The next one is beans and corn. We spoke about this one before, but try planting these ones sort of close together. It's really going to benefit the corn to have the nitrogen available for it in the soil. Now, this doesn't work very well in my garden because it's too shady to really get cornstalks that are strong enough to hold up the beans. But if you do have a sunny garden, which I'm assuming you probably do, it's very rare to have a shady vegetable patch, then definitely try this combination. And again, please don't get overwhelmed. Just try one or two of these. I'm just giving you some examples. The next combination is garlic and potatoes. Garlic emits this very strong smell that repels aphids and beetles, which can attack your potatoes. And it also acts as a natural fungicide for potatoes, protecting them from fungal issues like blight and scab. And they both act like a weed suppressant to benefit the other. Next up is peas and arugula. I don't hear many people talk about this combination, but I absolutely love it. So peas, similar to beans, peas fix nitrogen in the soil, which benefits the arugula. Nitrogen is really helpful for any of your leafy greens. What I like to do in my garden is create stakes out of old branches and twigs. So it's almost like you're creating a little pea hut for the peas to climb onto because they like to climb onto little branches and things like that. So having twigs that have lots and lots of little side shoots on them is great for the peas to kind of climb up. And then I'll just sow in little lines my arugula onto the soil in between. And the other way that this is beneficial for the two plants is that the peas, as they grow up, before they've established and kind of taken over, the arugula will have enough light and have enough sun to kind of germinate and get going and get nice and healthy. But then as the hot summer sun starts to bake the beds, the peas will have grown up enough to really provide shade for the arugula. And whenever I do this, my arugula lasts basically through the entire season without bolting. And if I have it in a different bed where it's not covered over with that shade, it bolts straight away, starting usually at the end of June. And this is a mutual love affair because the arugula acts as a ground cover, keeps in the moisture, keeps the weeds at bay, and that's really helpful for the peas. Okay, this is a great one. Cucumbers and nasturtiums. Nasturtiums, you might hear this a lot, but you know, people always companion plant with some of the same ones, you know, basil, nasturtiums, marigolds. And nasturtiums are just fantastic because they are a great trap crop, one of those great sacrificials, and they grow so quickly that you really can't tell the damage in the garden. They're just such a fantastic one. But this is a really fascinating combination because cucumber beetles are probably our biggest issue in the garden when it comes to getting great cucumbers. We'll usually get a handful of great cucumbers, and then the cucumber beetle just absolutely takes over by sort of midway into the season. And then we just get almost no cucumbers after they've taken hold. So planting nasturtiums in the same area, companion planting them with cucumbers apparently really confuses the cucumber beetle, and they go after the nasturtiums instead. This sounds fantastic, and I'm definitely going to try this one out this year. I haven't actually tried this, so I think we're going to do cucumbers again this year. We were tempted to give up because of the cucumber beetle, but let's try this one together. Have you heard about the success of this one, nasturtiums and cucumbers? Let me know in the comments below. And then you can also hear about things like long tap roots on certain plants like burdock, and then companion planting those with something that has shorter roots so they're not competing for nutrients, like something like lettuce, which has very shallow roots. Or even in some cases, the burdock brings the nutrients from deep in the soil to the surface, making it more available for those shallow rooted ones. So something like cucumbers and lettuce would be a really great combination because again, they don't compete for the same nutrients and at the same depth of soil. So other examples of these long tap roots would be, you know, like I said, burdock, carrots, and beets. Beets and spinach, it's a great combination because they don't compete for nutrients and the spinach can act like a weed suppressant for the beets. And then planting pots of mint throughout your vegetable patch or throughout your garden, this is just a fantastic way of doing it. Unless you really want mint to take over your entire garden, you don't want to plant it in the ground. Instead, you can just plant them in little terracotta pots with a tray or a dish underneath them because even the roots can go crazy. Okay. So we've talked about companion planting in your vegetable patch. Now I bet you're very curious how to apply this companion planting to your ornamental beds. One of my favorite cottage garden plants, and I know I'm not alone, is roses. So the combination I want to talk about is roses and feverfew. If you struggle with a Japanese beetle and aphids, you struggle with both of them, then you can use feverfew planted around your roses to help with the aphids or Japanese beetles. Now feverfew is this very sweet, it almost looks like sort of little larger chamomile. It's a great filler flower for arrangements, really beautiful. But if you plant that next to your roses, then that can really help out with those pests. The next one is peonies and sage. So the biggest pest for us in terms of our peonies is budworm. They come down on little silk threads, kind of like dancing down from the heavens after having landed on a tree. And the budworms just come down, they land on our peony buds, and then they chew holes right through the buds. And so then the flowers will open and they'll just kind of melt, or they will open and then they just, they don't last as long, right? However, sage is known to keep the budworm at bay. So we're going to try that this year, planting some sage next to our peonies. Next up is delphinium and thyme. Delphinium is famously eaten by slugs or snails in any garden that struggles with that. And we have millions of slugs in our garden, millions. However, thyme is a natural deterrent for slugs. So you can try planting thyme as sort of a ground cover around your delphiniums, just making sure that they have enough space and airflow to make sure both of the plants are nice and healthy. But that will retain moisture, that will help with weed suppression, and hopefully the little slugs won't want to climb over the thyme to get to your yummy delphiniums. And similarly for those pesky slugs. So we noticed this this past year, we are pulling off hundreds of slugs off of our petunias, but we noticed that the ones that we planted closest to our nepeta, or catmint, Persian catmint, a beautiful glaucous fuzzy foliage with these zingy blue flowers, one of my all-time favorite plants for the cottage garden or any garden. And we noticed that those ones were almost completely left alone from the slugs. They just grew so quick, they were so much healthier than the other ones. And the other ones were the same exact variety, but they were just a little bit farther away from the nepeta, maybe about five feet away from the nepeta. And the other one was sitting directly next to it. So we're going to try this next year and just see if it works. But really, nepeta does repel slugs. They don't like that kind of anything in the mint family. They don't tend to like that very herby kind of scent. So if it's near that, it'll probably confuse them enough to keep your plant safe from harm. The next one is about sweet peas. Plant sweet peas next to nasturtiums. So if you have soft garden colors, there are some nasturtiums that are really beautiful. You can actually find white nasturtiums or really soft pale yellows, or there's the creamy kind of apricot one called peach melba that I like to plant. But planting that with your sweet peas can really help keep the aphids at bay. And aphids are the reason that our sweet peas really, really struggle. So that's something that you could really try in your garden this year. The nasturtium is also going to attract other beneficial insects like pollinators and predatory insects. And this combination works really well when the sweet peas start to go over and sort of look dry and brown. And then the nasturtiums can just sort of take over whatever it is that you're growing your sweet peas up. And then that way you just sort of have that healthy, beautiful foliage all year round. Next up we have sunflowers and pole beans, especially pole beans with particularly beautiful flowers. So now we're going to be talking sort of more about that cottage garden companion planting where you're planting your beautiful flowers right next to your edibles. So the pole beans can climb up those sunflowers and they can add a beautiful sparkle if you get really beautiful flowers on your beans, which a lot of beans have gorgeous flowers. And you could do the exact same with your edible peas, your snap peas, your sugar pop peas, things like that. Those peas have really gorgeous flowers. You can get beautiful flowers on peas that will look beautiful in your ornamental or cottage garden beds. Next up we have lavender and cabbages or cabbages and calendula. So this is sort of a double whammy. Lavender can be a very beneficial plant for cabbages because the strong scent can help deter pests like the cabbage moth and worms that target brassicas like cabbage. And calendula works much in the same way. And it can also be a crop. It can be that sort of sacrificial plant for the aphids as well. And we really struggle with our aphids on our cabbages. This is cursed. It's not right. It looks not a fun thing to see on your edible plants. Next up we have chamomile and strawberries. Now you could argue that both of these are edible. Chamomile like makes a fantastic tea and is great for cakes and certain desserts and things like that. But these two are fantastic pairing. Not only do the little white flowers look so beautiful together, but chamomile can actually deter pests like the Japanese beetle and flies, and it can attract pollinators like bees and butterflies to help pollinate your strawberries. And it's said to actually improve the flavor of the strawberries as well. The next one you could try in your cottage garden are eggplants and marigolds. You know, the eggplant flowers are these beautiful purple flowers. They are so gorgeous. So if you haven't grown eggplants, I mean, I don't know, I think there are so many fantastic eggplant recipes, but if you haven't grown eggplants, just trying them for the flowers even could be a fun little experiment. You can also use the eggplant in arrangements if you don't like cooking with it, but eggplant is so beautiful. And the reason this is such a great pairing is because not only do the flowers look so beautiful together, you know, so many marigolds come in that beautiful orange, yellow color palette, those reds even, but next to the beautiful purple flowers of the eggplant, I think that pairing is just a really pretty one in the garden, but also the marigolds will deter all sorts of beetles and attract pollinators as well as the creta compound that keeps the white flies and aphids away. And then there are just some other plants that would kind of chuck in throughout your borders. So catmint, nepeta that we talked about, it deters rabbits. So plant these as a companion to any of the flowers in your garden that the rabbits like to munch on. Things like petunias, pansies, or antirhinums, which are snapdragons. Alliums deter deer. You can use this to great effect on the plants that your deer tend to just go after in your garden. So if your deer like to graze on your roses, you know, deer in my area love eating my roses, then plant a little hedge or a cluster of alliums around your roses to sort of protect them, to sort of deter the deer from entering in that area. You could plant both early flowering alliums, things like sensation or globe master alliums, and then also later blooming alliums, things like the serendipity allium, which is a later blooming perennial allium. For all the benefits we talked about before, I would throw in some herbs all throughout your cottage garden. They look beautiful with the ambelifers that we talked about when they start to go to seed, but also they release compounds. They also attract loads of pollinators. They attract loads of beneficial insects that are going to kind of help take care of your other pest populations. So throw in some dill, some parsley, some basil, some cilantro, and just pepper those throughout. Yarrow and sedum as well. These are great perennials that kind of can be planted anywhere throughout your garden. They're little landing pads for all kinds of wonderful insects that are going to help out your garden, the health of your garden. Things like hoverflies and bumblebees and honeybees and butterflies and all kinds of things that are great for your garden. So companion plant those as well throughout the garden. Salvia, especially playing the blues, salvia and cosmos and zinnias are great annuals to attract lots of different pollinators into the garden as well. So we have the perennials in the form of yarrow and sedum, and then for the annuals things like zinnias, playing the blues, salvia is probably my favorite, and cosmos as well. Those will make a great addition as little friends in your cottage garden. And finally, you are a companion in your garden. You're part of the garden. So let's plant something nice for you. Let's plant some scented leaf pelargonium and some lemongrass to keep those mosquitoes at bay. We have planted herbs all along the sort of the steps up to our porch. And even though in other areas of the property, there are mosquitoes in the main gardens, the cottage gardens around, we really rarely get mosquitoes. Lots of blackflies, but really hardly any mosquitoes. And I think it's down to that. Okay, this is a long one. So for those of you who are still here, let's design a companion garden together. We're going to be doing both one for edibles and ornamentals. Let's dive in. Okay, so we have our little veggie patch, our sweet little veggie patch pulled up. We're going to start by designing a kitchen garden for you. Companion planted, kitchen garden. Then we're going to move on and we're going to do a cottage garden or ornamental garden companion planted as well. So we have our eight little garden beds and I'm going to begin with tomatoes in the back. So let's do three little tomatoes in the back. And then do you remember which one we're going to do with the tomatoes? Basil! Very good. That looks like a healthy basil plant. We're going to do a basil plant on either side of the bed. Then for good measure, we're going to add some marigolds. Let's do some yellow marigolds. That'll pair nicely with the red of the tomatoes. There we go. So our first bed is three tomato plants, three marigolds, and two basil. Those are going to be some healthy tomatoes. Bed number two. Let's do some peppers. I want some peppers with peppers on them. So we'll do this one. So again, we're going to do three peppers in this bed and then let's plant some borage around. Look at that borage. Gorgeous. So I'm going to say let's do some borage on either end. So one borage plant there and then one on the other side. So we'll just duplicate that and pop it on the other side. So those peppers are going to look really pretty actually with the flowers of the borage as well. Next bed. The match made in heaven. Kale. I want lacinato kale, but I'm not too fussed. So let's fill up this bed here with some lacinato in the center. Tall, statuesque. And then we will put our dill on the outside. Oh good, it's already in flower. How perfect. See how wispy that foliage is compared to the kale? See that? Can you see it? Do you know what I'm saying? So wispy. Wispy, wispy, wispy. So I'm just going to plant these dill plants in between our kale. And y'all, if you end up using any of these designs, please let me know. That would be so much fun. Great. So there's our kale and dill bed all done. Next up, we have our nasturtiums and broccoli, and we want to plant this next to the kale bed. So we're benefiting from all of this. The kale is benefiting from the nasturtiums as well. So there's our three broccoli, and let's add our nasturtiums. Nasturtiums, I mean, one seed gets so big. So we can kind of clump this at the corner, and we'll have it kind of spilling over the side of that bed. I love doing that with kale in raised beds. It's just planting at the edge and just kind of having it tumble over into the pathway. I really like that overabundant look, and that way it can kind of climb over into the kale bed and benefit both of those beds as well. Double companion planting. For the next bed, we're going to do beans and corn. They have three all together. Boom. Thank you. I'm going to make them kind of small so that you can still see what's cracking in the other beds. Let's put them here. So we'll do over to the side, kind of like so, and then let's do our beans because beans fix nitrogen in the soil. Very good. Let's do a couple of these. Beans are going to be happy. Corn's going to be happy. Great. I mean, so we'll plant the beans on this side of the bed, and then they'll kind of snake their way over, and they'll probably climb the cornstalks like that. So we'll sort of do it like that. Brilliant. Let's move on to our next bed. So our next bed is garlic and potatoes. Let's do our potatoes in the center. All right, this looks like more of an Ipomoea potato vine, but we'll just suspend disbelief and imagine that it's a potato, potato foliage. This doesn't really look like garlic. This is more of like an ornamental kind of garlic or wild garlic, but you get the idea. You would just plant a few of these kind of around, and both can serve as a weed suppressant and a kind of a moisture retention sort of mulch ground cover as the other. That would be pretty if we did garlic with the purple-flowering garlic, but we'll just imagine. All right, our next bed is peas and arugula, and we're going to add something special as well to this one. Imagine that they have a little network of branches that they can kind of climb up, and then we're going to do arugula. They didn't exactly have arugula, so let's do this lettuce, and we'll kind of shape it like like arugula or rocket, and then we'll put this as sort of a ground cover in the center. I love this combination. I hope that you try this one, especially if you live in a similar growing zone to me. Zone 5A is where we are. Very mountainous, but yeah, that's really pretty. Our final bed is cucumbers and nasturtiums. This one I'm very excited to try this year, so let's do like so with the cucumbers. I usually like to grow my cucumbers up something to help with the powdery mildew. We'll do them on the ground like that, and nasturtiums. Beautiful. I guess I should have kind of alternated and put the nasturtiums on this side, the nasturtiums and cucumber on this side, but that's okay. Why don't we have it spilling over this side, and let's pop this cucumber a little farther over here. So there you go, you kind of get the picture, and there we have it. And then I would do, let's see if I can do a little terracotta pot. Yeah, let's do a little terracotta pot. Let's do some mint in some terracotta pots. Peppermint or spearmint will work. Bellissimo. And there we have it, our beautiful vegetable patch with companion planting. Fantastic. I hope that was helpful. Feel free to take a little screenshot if you're watching this on maybe a computer or your phone so that you can this as kind of a guide to think about what you might want to plant in your vegetable patch this year. Now let's very swiftly move on to our ornamental and cottage bed. Okay, so let's go ahead and put together a beautiful companion garden for this gorgeous little cottage. Sweet. I'm going to start with sweet peas and nasturtiums, and we're going to do those up a tripod here in the back. All right, so we're going to put the sweet peas climbing up this little pyramid here. Now let's add our nasturtiums. And typically I would want to do a lighter colored nasturtium, but let's do this one because this is all they have. So that'll be in the back of the border so that it's creating some nice height. And next to that, we'll do some sunflowers and some beans. Now here are some actual tall sunflowers, but I'm just going to use like a miniature sunflower and pretend like it's a bigger variety. Just so I don't have to keep replicating it. So some sunflowers right up against the cottage itself, and then we'll put some beans climbing up it. Great. So we'll have some pole beans kind of climbing up in there, rambling through our really happy sunflowers, because that looks like a very sunny spot. So now I'm going to put some roses and feverfew. It looks like this knockout one is kind of the only one that they have. So let's plunk this over here. And we could probably repeat that a few times to give it some nice interest in the garden. And we could probably repeat the tripod and the flower, the sunflowers, honestly, just to create some more of that balance. So now we're going to do some feverfew. So some feverfew around the roses. Gorgeous. Next up, let's do our peonies and sage. A little salmon pink peony. Gosh, that's pretty. I want to put that up against the house and then we'll just put some sage around it. This is a really pretty, this looks like it's variegated sage. It looks kind of like that tricolor that I grew this year. Very pretty. So we could put some of that. And it's the really herbal one that you can kind of smell. Even when you walk into a garden center, you can kind of smell that sage. That's the giveaway. So doing that, almost like a ground cover underneath your peonies. I like how that foliage is sort of a gray green. It's that really glossy, bright green of the peonies. Next up, let's do delphiniums and thyme. Oh, I love delphiniums. And I kind of want these to be a real statement. We're going to put them a little bit in front of the window because it's okay if those spires kind of block a little bit of the view for part of the year because they'll go away in no time. We'll pop that there and we'll put it behind. That's nice. Great. Let's do this beautiful mound of creeping thyme, really beautiful purple, and then it'll be green for the rest of the year when it's not flowering. Beautiful. So hopefully that'll keep your slugs at bay. And now I'm going to do some nepeta and petunias just around the edge for the same thing to keep the slugs away. My favorite nepeta. Oh, so pretty. I'm gonna repeat this all around because it's gorgeous. Plus, if you have it as kind of a hedge around the outside of your garden, the rabbits will probably leave your garden alone too. All right, here's this petunia royal purple, but you know what? It looks like Bordeaux. And I think the super petunia Bordeaux actually looks so pretty against the nepeta. We did that the second year we lived in our cottage and so beautiful. This combination is really, yes, I like it. This is looking like a really fun little cottage. All right, now let's do some lavender. So now we're going to do some lavender and some cabbages. And I kind of want to do this alternating behind the petunias because nepeta and lavender can kind of look similar. So if it's like this, I think that'll look really pretty. You guys looking good. Gorgeous. Then we'll do some cabbages in here. So if you don't like a cottage garden and you prefer a traditional ornamental garden, you know, you could just do those first groupings of plants, you know, the peonies and the sage, the delphiniums and the creeping thyme, the roses and the feverfew. You could do the nepeta with the petunias and then sort of leave it at that. But for those of you who are really interested in a cottage garden where you have ornamentals and edibles, spread all throughout, then the rest of this, I think is going to be really fun. So having the cabbages is sort of tucked in behind the lavender, I think is a really pretty look. I really like that. It adds like a lot of structure that I think works really well. It's coming together. It's starting to look like something. Next up, we're going to do some eggplants and marigolds. We'll tuck those in kind of in the back here. And there's the Kilimanjaro marigold that is a white color. That's a really pretty one, but they don't have that. So we're going to use this yellow and tuck that at the feet there of our eggplant. And then, because this is a cottage garden, I do kind of want to repeat the the dill and the kale. I love having kale in my cottage garden. It's just, I think it's just so pretty. So here's some kale that's gone to seed. We let ours go to seed in Northern California and it was just stunning. And look at how beautifully that pairs with all the purples that we have in the garden. I like that a lot. Let's put that kind of behind there like that. It's getting a little wild. So let's do our dill spread throughout. You kind of can't really tell, but I think it's nice. That would look so pretty. Beautiful. Okay, so that's a very kind of traditional cottage garden. Lots going on. You know, we have the repetition, so it looks a little bit cleaner. There's a lot going on, but your eye can kind of find similarities in the mix, so it doesn't look super overwhelming, just like a jumble. It still has a little bit of cohesion to it. Lots of beautiful companion plants here, and I think that would be a really lovely thing to walk up to when you're walking home, when you're walking up to your cottage. All right, so that's it. Thank you so much for joining us. I really hope you found this video helpful in some way. Please let me know any of the companion planting pairings that you're going to try this year. I'd love to hear. Please like this video if you liked it, if you found it helpful in some way. Subscribe if you're not already, and we'll see you in the next one. Okay, bye!