Flowers
Why grow flowers?
Growing flowers can connect us to our place and, sometimes, our culture, mutually nourishing us and land.
Flowers attract pollinators and other beneficial creatures.
Flowers can enhance our wellbeing from the joy of their beauty as well as working outside planting and caring for them.
Find out more about ……
Borage
Beautiful blue borage can be eaten in soups & pasta fillings or flowers sprinkled on drinks. Bees love it too – it’s good food for them in early spring & it flowers year-round too. Borage adds trace minerals to the soil & is good for composting. Its dense leaves provide shaded habitat for beneficial insects like lacewings & parasitoid wasps.
Calendula
Calendula flowers are sweet to eat & useful as food colouring. They are also good medicine: reducing inflammation & improving skin health.
Nasturtium
Nasturtium flowers are peppery & sweet to eat & pretty in salads. The flower buds can be pickled & used like capers.
Rengarenga lily
Flowers can connect us to our cultural identity: The rengarenga lily is native to NZ. Traditionally important for medicine as well as food, it was probably cultivated widely.
Zinnias & Sunflowers
Flowers can connect us to our cultural identity: First grown by the Aztecs, zinnias come from SW North America & Central/ S America. Sunflowers are also native to N America and have been cultivated there for ~5,000 years.