Let Them Eat Flowers - Inviting Pollinating Guests to Tea

Here are a few shots of the flowers in my Nicaraguan garden and a little explanation of what they're doing there.

Ain't they just so darned pretty?

I have been using flowers in my garden for a few reasons. Firstly, they're beautiful and they smell nice. When you grow a garden for food, while the diversity of it all is very interesting to the eye, having an aesthetic shock of colour is very pleasing to the soul.

It's even more exciting when you can get the wild flowers to spread. To invite them in and to use them in your landscape as a flick of your gardening paintbrush.

More importantly though, flowers bring in your pollinators and these seed spreading love bug pollinate the plants, which encourages them to spread like wild fire and bloom like bounties. You'll also find that these colourful clusters will attract predators too like ladybirds. These will eat up your pest population and help you veggies to grow plump without big buggy holes.

And in true stacking functions style, flowers have multiple uses beyond their garden glory. Many of their petals can be used for dyes. Many are edible (such as the hibiscus above) and have very high vitamin content. Many have medicinal properties. Design, design, design. And don't forget the florals.