My flower garden: Marigolds

Marigolds are one of those flowers that has so many reasons to plant it.  It is an excellent companion flower all over your vegetable garden.
They are cheap flowers to buy and very easy t grow and maintain.  I am not good with flowers at all.  I kill them most of the time.  The only flowers I can grow from seed and get to survive are marigolds and nasturtiums.
There are some types of marigolds that are edible.  Therefore you can grow them and add them to a salad to make it pretty.  Some people also use them to make things like vinaigrette or even wine.  I have yet to taste one myself.
Marigolds grow from spring to fall.  They add color and beauty to your garden for until the frost finally kills them off.  This also means that you are attracting bees and butterflies to your garden for three seasons with just one type of flower.
The reason I plant marigolds in my garden is that they can be used to deter many types of problematic insects like tomato hornworm, Mexican bean beetle, nematodes, thrips, whiteflies, and squash bugs.
There are many types of flowers you can grow to do the things that I have listed above.  One of the more important concepts to keep in mind when setting up something like a permaculture homestead is that many things can have many different purposes.  Why do many things that each only serve one function when you can do one thing that can serve many functions?

Saving seed: Nasturtium

Nasturtiums are highly beneficial to your garden.  I plant them year after year and they always have grown well for me.  However, I have also had to buy seeds every year.  This is a shame because nasturtiums seeds are very easy to collect.  I hope to never need to buy them again.  I have a vining type nasturtium growing in the garden now, and the seeds seem to be all over the place.  Many of them fall right off of the plant and I just have to go out and pick them up.  The picture shows a seed still attached to the plant.  Just pluck it off.  You will generally find these seeds in sets of two, but one must have already fallen off here.  If they do fall of and you don't get them, they should just grow for you next year.  Once you have your seed collection, leave them out to dry.  They will shrink up a decent amount and probably won't be as big as the ones you would buy in a seed packet, but then most things you buy look very different then the ones you collect in a garden.  I have yet to try growing my saved seeds, but next year will be the year.  They are all healthy plants, so I don't see why they wouldn't grow for me.

My flower garden: Nasturtium

Nasturtiums can be grown for many reasons.  You can grow them because they are pretty flowers that are easy to grow.  You can grow them to eat both the flowers and the leaves.  I grow them because they are beneficial to the bug population that I want to have in my garden, or not so beneficial to the bug population I don't want.
There are many different types of nasturtiums you can grow in your garden.  Some grow like bushes, some grow like vines.  The colors range from yellow to red to shades of purple.  They grow well in not so good soil, so they can be planted anywhere there is full sun.  You pretty much just plant them and they grow.  I plant mine when I plant my beans and they bloom throughout the summer all over the garden.
Nasturtiums have a sort of peppery taste to them.  They are related to the cress family and are often added to salads both for their flavor and for their decorative qualities.  You can even use the seeds in pickling for an interesting taste.
I grow nasturtiums because they are known to ward off bad bugs.  An excellent form of organic pest control.  Cucumber beetles and squash vine borers dislike the peppery smell they emit.  Good places to plant them are among cucs, pumpkins, squash or anywhere you have room really.  Aphids, slugs and white cabbage butterflies like nasturtiums so they can be planted near other plants these bugs like so that they will go after the nasturtiums first.  I personally don't like this idea, but some people do use it with success.  Most flowers also attract pollinators to your garden.  Bees and butterflies are always a good thing to have around to help pollinate your crops.

My flower garden: Chamomile

Chamomile is a pretty little daisy like flower that is commonly known for herbal tea.  They are also very easy to grow in your garden.  You can get German, which is an annual, or Roman, which is a perennial.  Either kind should spread and form a nice ground cover that you can walk on without hurting the plants.  They smell sort of like apples and are calming and relaxing.  They will continue to bloom throughout the summer providing you with tons of flowers to keep you busy harvesting.
I grow Roman chamomile in my flower garden because then I don't have to replant it every year.  I find that growing it from seed is a little difficult because the seeds are so tiny and delicate.  I ended up buying a few plants and they have spread like crazy and I probably won't ever need to buy any more.
I grow chamomile for the herbal tea.  Sometimes you come home from a hard day at work and you just need something warm and relaxing.  By harvesting the flowers all summer, you will end up with quite a stash for the winter.  I have about four plants in my garden and it provides for two of us pretty well.  I will likely get a few more when I have the room though.  In addition to being relaxing, chamomile is also a good anti-inflammatory and good for toothaches, allergies, burns, anemia, fevers, and indigestion. All of these great uses make it worth the effort it takes to harvest the flowers.
Harvesting can be quite tedious.  They are little tiny flowers that bloom all summer so you are never done harvesting them.  I harvest mine currently by cutting each bloom with scissors and dropping them into a paper bag to dry.  I am looking into some of the contraptions they make to harvest with and will likely try one out next year.  They are just like the rakes used to harvest blueberries I think.  Either way, it really is worth the effort.

My flower garden: Echinacea

Also called purple coneflower, echinacea is a beautiful and very useful flower to add to your garden.  I'm sure you have heard of taking echinacea as a vitamin for good immune health, but there are many other uses.  You don't need to go out and buy supplements either, just grow the flower in your own garden.
Echinacea is a wonderful flower to attract pollinators to your garden.  Butterflies and bees love the flower and I often find them all over mine out in the garden.  They attract many types of beneficial insects to your garden which are vital to maintaining an organic garden.  The seeds are also loved by finches, which eat the seeds and the bugs in your garden.
Echinacea root is loaded with antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties.  Western societies use echinacea as an immune system stimulant while traditionally, echinacea is used to treat acne, blood poisoning, cuts and sores, and fever.  The leaves have some of these properties as well, but the greater concentration can be found in the roots.  The roots and leaves are both fairly simple to harvest and store so that you will have plenty you can put in storage to last you all year.

My flower garden: Angelica

As I had mentioned before, a flower garden can be a form of organic pest control if you plant the right flowers.  So what are the right kinds of flowers to plant?  Angelica is the first flower I started in my garden.  Initially, I chose this flower because I wanted some perennials that could grow in partial shade and attract beneficial insects, and these were on sale.  It turns out that these were a great choice for me.

Angelica is a biennial plant which means that it will grow for about two seasons.  It likes partial shade and loamy soil (although mine is growing quite well in the clay that I have).  They like cool moist climates and can get from 4-6 feet tall.  The small flowers are white or greenish white and grow in large clusters.  It is part of the Apiaceae family along with dill, caraway, queen anne's lace and chevril.  There are also a couple of poisonous plants that are very similar to these plants, so be careful if you find it wild.  
Angelica can be eaten in many ways.  The leaves have a sort of celery flavor and can be used in place of lovage in many recipes.  The stalks are slightly sweet almost licorice like and are often candied when harvested young.  The stalks are also good to flavor liquor and the leaves go well with rhubarb.  Even the roots can be eaten.  Check out this site for a couple of angelica recipes.  
Angelica is also part of the grouping Dong-quai, second most common herb used in China, second to ginseng.  Angelica contains compounds called coumarins.  Coumarins can be used to reduce swelling, especially in the lymph nodes and associated with arthritis.  Angelica can be used for women to help relieve symptoms of PMS and hot flashes.  You should not take angelica if you are pregnant!  Angelica contains bergapten, which can be used to treat skin conditions and linalool and borneol which are antibacterial and antifungal.  The boiled roots can be used to speed up healing.  It also increases immunity and circulation, stimulates appetite, relaxes muscles and many other things.  
When I bought my first few angelica plants, I did not know any of this.  All I really knew about it was that it was good for attracting beneficial insects.  It's tiny flowers make it easy for small bugs like parasitic wasps to get to the pollen.  Parasitic wasps are good for your garden because they use big bugs like tomato horn worm to grow their babies.  This is turn kills the tomato horn worm, organically protecting your garden from them.  There are also many pollinators that will be attracted to your flower garden and angelica.  I was happy to see that they bloomed in early spring which helps to get the pollinators to your garden right away.  I now need to add some flowers that will bloom right after the angelica to keep the pollinators around.  
Now that I know all I do about angelica, I will be able to take full advantage of the plants next year.  I plan on saving seed (I'll talk about this later) and learning how to use all the parts of the angelica plant to their full potential.  I can't believe I was so lucky to stumble across such a great plant! 

Flower garden

This is my flower garden.  I know there aren't any flowers to speak of, but I am new at this flower gardening thing.  I never did feel the need to plant flowers.  What do I get out of flowers.  I  would much rather grow yummy fruits and vegetables.  But this is a special flower garden.  This garden is going to be full of perennial flowers that are put their to attract beneficial insects to my garden.  (Perennial flowers so they come back every year.)  Bees and butterflies help to pollinate my fruits and vegetables.  Since there aren't any of these yet, I need flowers like the Angelica in the pictures to attract these bugs so that they will hang out in my garden.  Come time for my garden to be pollinated, it will be full of helpers to do the job.

 Another kind of bug that these plants will attract are parasitic wasps.  They aren't the big wasps that you are used to, but little tiny ones that don't sting.  What they do is help to rid the garden of unwanted bugs.  Bugs like tomato horn worn can destroy my plants.  The parasitic wasps lay their eggs on the horn worm and when the eggs hatch, the babies eat the horn worn and the horn worm doesn't eat my tomatoes.  This is a much better option than nasty chemicals any day.

For more information try this link Beneficial Insects