One of my missions is to bust the misconception that vegetable gardens aren’t attractive. I really think it is possible to have a vegetable garden that looks great and grows a lot of food.
Plant lots and lots of flowers among your vegetables. While annuals are my favorite, I also plant spring bulbs in my vegetable beds to add color early in the season.
Putting flowers in your garden will give it pops of color that draw the eye in and around the area. They will also attract lots of good bugs like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, and your neighbors will be amazed that they’ve never seen a vegetable garden look so good!
In this article, I’ll share the best flowers for raised beds. This list features my absolute favorite flowers I’ve been growing in my vegetable garden for many years.
When you pick a basket full of colorful vegetables you grew yourself, there’s nothing better than that feeling. For those of you who know what I mean, I’m sure you’ll also enjoy putting together a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers.
Luckily, if you already grow vegetables, it’s very simple to add flowers to your raised beds. This way, you can get beautiful bouquets all summer long to give to friends and family.
Raised garden beds provide the perfect opportunity to get creative with flower choices. With their contained structure and customized soil, raised beds allow you to tailor plantings precisely to your vision. When designing flower plantings for raised beds, consider height, color, bloom time, and complementary pairings to create stunning visual interest.
Here are some eye-catching annual and perennial flower options that are sure to bring your raised beds to life:
Cheery Annuals
Zinnias
A must-have for any raised flower bed zinnias thrive in the warmer drier environment of a raised planting. These heat-loving annuals come in a rainbow of colors and a variety of forms, from elegant cactus types to bold, densely petaled dahlias. Try combining contrasting colors and bloom shapes for excitement.
Marigolds
Another annual that enjoys raised beds marigolds bloom profusely in shades of yellow gold, orange and red. Choose taller African marigolds as thriller vertical accents amidst smaller French marigolds.
Nasturtiums
With their trailing habit, edible blossoms and bright jewel tones, nasturtiums are ideal spillers in a raised bed. Let them drape gracefully over the edges to soften lines.
Sunflowers
Sunflowers make a big statement with their towering height and demand for space. For maximum impact, concentrate a few specimen plants within your raised bed. Combine colors and sizes for a dynamic display.
Elegant Perennials
Lavender
Known for its aromatic flowers and silvery foliage, lavender thrives in the fast-draining environment of a raised bed. Mass lavender plants together to form a fragrant, bee-friendly hedge.
Daylilies
Choose a mix of daylily varieties to enjoy continuous blooms all season in sunset hues. Daylilies do well in raised beds and their grassy leaves provide appealing texture.
Ornamental Grasses
Grasses bring movement and structure with their slender leaves and plumes. Try airy, upright varieties like maiden grass or fountain grass clustered in a raised bed.
Verbena
With long lasting flowers in shades of purple, red and pink, verbena is a reliable raised bed performer. It mixes effortlessly with other plants and attractively spills over edges.
Complementary Color Schemes
strategic color pairings create an eye-catching impact and guide the viewer’s gaze through the design.
Red + Yellow
These contrasting hues instantly catch the eye when combined. Try pairing red zinnias with yellow marigolds.
Pink + Blue
The soft yet vivid colors of pink and blue evoke a romantic cottage garden feel. Lavender and verbena make the perfect match.
Orange + Purple
Bold and vibrant, this complementary duo packs a visual punch. Orange African marigolds with purple fountain grass create excitement.
White + Green
For an elegant monochromatic look, white blooms like snowy alyssum or Shasta daisies partner beautifully with green foliage plants.
Height Variation
Creating vertical layers adds important depth and naturalistic style to a raised bed. Here are some height pairings to try:
- Thrillers: Sunflowers, plume grasses, daylilies
- Fillers: Zinnias, marigolds, lavender
- Spillers: Verbena, nasturtiums, dwarf dahlias
Continue the layers with trailing plants draping along edges to soften lines for a flowing, dynamic look.
Extended Bloom Times
Carefully selecting flowers with staggered bloom seasons ensures continuous color in your raised beds from spring through fall.
Spring: Pansies, dianthus, foxglove, poppies, bulb flowers
Summer: Zinnias, marigolds, verbena, ornamental grasses
Fall: Sedum, asters, mums, ornamental peppers
Multi-season interest eliminates boring downtime and provides a steady supply of cut flowers.
Fragrant Flowers
You can engage the sense of smell in your raised bed designs by incorporating deliciously fragrant blooms. Some wonderfully scented options include:
- Lilies
- Lavender
- Roses
- Carnations
- Sweet alyssum
- Nicotiana
- Stocks
- Sweet peas
Let enticing aromas lead visitors into your garden and raised beds.
Pollinator-Friendly Choices
By selecting flowers that attract and support pollinators, your raised beds will be abuzz with beneficial life. Some top plants for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators include:
- Zinnias
- Cosmos
- Bee balm
- Lavender
- Sunflowers
- Verbena
- Asters
- Sages
- Milkweed
Welcoming pollinators adds natural beauty and promotes ecological diversity.
Combination Inspiration
Here are a few fabulous flower combinations sure to inspire striking raised bed designs:
Sunflowers + Zinnias + Marigolds
The vibrant yellow, orange and red blooms of this classic trio evoke warm, summery joy.
Lavender + Roses + Dusty Miller
Cool blues, purples and silver-grey foliage mingle elegantly in this soothing color scheme.
Dahlias + Nicotiana + Grasses
This textural blend of spiky lavender dahlias, airy white nicotiana and wispy grasses creates informal beauty.
Zinnias + Verbena + Sweet Peas
Mingling hot pink zinnias, purple verbena spillers and climbing sweet pea vines makes for a vibrant vertical display.
Let your imagination run wild playing with colorful flowers in your raised garden beds. With so many options, the only limit is your creativity!
Favorite Flowers for Raised Bed Gardening
Zinnias
Nothing screams summer more than a handful of cheery zinnias. Available in a brilliant rainbow of colors, these cut-and-come-again plants are essential for any flower-loving gardener.
As one of the easiest flowers to grow, they are perfect for beginning gardeners. They also do well in a wide range of climates and growing zones.
Favorites include:
Lots of cool zinnia varieties in this Etsy shop here.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)
Black-eyes Susan is commonly seen in perennial and prairie gardens in the Midwest where I live. The good news is that you don’t have to know how to grow perennial flowers to grow rudbeckias.
The photo above features the best Black-eyed Susan I’ve ever grown – Prairie Sun. Instead of a black eye (or center), it has more of a green center and two-toned petals featuring complementary yellows.
I’ve also tried and liked
Cherry Brandy (maroon instead of yellow)
Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena globosa)
I’ve been planting Globe Amaranth as a companion to my vegetables for as long as I can remember. I often rotate the flowers I grow each year, but this one is always on the list!.
Many of the types are tall and airy, so they won’t crowd out your vegetables when you mix them in.
You can use the flowers for winter bouquets too because they stay fresh after being dried and last long after the first frost.
I love Strawberry Fields Gomphrena mixed with Prairie Sun Rudbeckia in the same garden bed. The red and yellow colors pop against each other and the vastly different forms of the plants complement each other well.
This Etsy shop has some fun varieties of Gomphrena.
Tall or Purple Top Verbena (Verbena bonariensis)
There are various verbenas out there, but this one is my favorite by far. It’s tall and airy, so I love mixing it will other flowers and vegetables. The insects and pollinators love it and I’ve seen many a butterfly enjoying the flowers. It blooms for a long time – from July until frost.
I’ve had a hard time starting seeds at home, so every spring I buy a few seedlings at the nursery near me. It does spread its seeds pretty quickly, so in late spring I often find little seedlings all over my garden. They don’t bother me though. I let some of them grow and weed out the rest.
Nasturtium
I didn’t know about climbing nasturtiums until a few years ago. I found some seeds online while browsing, ordered them as an experiment, sowed the seeds in the winter, and put the seedlings at the base of my turquoise tuteur (see photo below).
I was surprised and happy to see them slowly climbing up and up all season, covered in flowers. I just fell in love with them! Now I grow a bunch of different kinds on the tuteur and at the base of my cattle panel trellises.
There are also mounding nasturtiums, which I also plant some years. I sometimes don’t plant them because they tend to get too big and spread out in my garden.
In the last few years, I’ve noticed many more interesting and unique varieties being introduced. Some of my favorites:
Salvia
If you want a hummingbird magnet in your garden, then scatter some Lady in Red Salvia throughout your raised beds. It continues to bloom all summer long into fall and I also love this one mixed with the yellow flowers of Prairie Sun Rudbeckia.
There are lots of colors of salvia out there, but the red and blue are my favorites.
Where To Buy Flower Seeds and Plants
Buying Seeds
If you already have a favorite seed company, their catalog should have a lot of great flower varieties for raised beds. Because they are so unique, some of the types we talked about in this blog post are even harder to find.
However, I’ve noticed that seed companies are adding more than just annual flowers to their seed selections because growing flowers is becoming more popular.
If you like me, you want to support small, local seed companies and growers. Check out some of these seed sources.
Etsy: There are a lot of individual seed savers and growers on Etsy and they tend to carry many of the harder to find varieties. To save you time lots of time I created an Etsy list featuring many of the varieties from this post. Check it out here.
This Washington state farm is owned by a family and has been slowly breeding their own varieties and increasing the number of seeds they sell every year.
They open their seed shop in early January and many of their most unique seeds tend to sell out very quickly. I’d suggest signing up for their email list so you get notification each year about the seed shop’s opening date. Find all of the seed varieties they offer here.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds: This Maine company is a favorite of organic farmers all over the US. Their vegetable, flower, and herb seeds are focused on high-performing varieties. I order many of my seeds from here.
If you want to grow cut flowers this season you won’t be disappointed if you order from them. See their offerings here.
Botanical Interests: This Colorado company has been selling herbs, seeds, and flowers for 25 years. They also have a robust seed donation program I utilized when I ran youth gardening programs for a local non-profit in Madison. Check out their flower varieties here.
Amazon: The Amazon platform might be easier for you to use to buy seeds, but I have trouble with it because it’s hard to tell who is selling the seeds I’m buying.
As I was researching different types of flowers for this article, I found that one of the sellers had taken pictures from the Floret Flower Farm website and used them in their listing. It’s the Wild West on Amazon sometimes.
I know it’s easy to buy things on Amazon, so in my Amazon shop I have lists of my favorite garden tools, vegetable varieties, and other things.
Buying Plants
I usually start most of my flowers for raised beds at home in the winter, but every once in a while I go to the farmers market or a nearby nursery to see what they have that makes me want to give it a try.
If you don’t have room to start flowers at home or don’t start seeds, I suggest you buy annual flowers near you. One of my favorite places to buy plants is from local farmers who I know are growing the same plants in their own fields.
You can read more about where where to buy vegetable plants.
Exceptional Wooden Raised Garden Bed Ideas That Will Inspire You
FAQ
What flowers grow best in a raised bed?
How do you arrange flowers in a raised bed?
What to put in a raised flower bed?
What are raised garden bed ideas?
Raised garden bed ideas offer the solution for many common gardeners’ woes, from sore knees to poor soil conditions. They can also make a stunning feature for an outdoor space, adding extra height and interest when filled with beautiful flowers, vegetables, and even shrubs.
What flowers can you plant in a raised bed?
– Hardiness Zones: 4-9. – These lilies come in various colors, from white and pink to orange and yellow.They thrive in raised beds because they prefer well-drained soil.Just be cautious if you have pets,
Are raised flower beds a good idea?
Raised garden beds have so many benefits—they allow you to control your soil composition, are less strenuous on your knees and back, offer protection from pests, and produce fewer weeds. Beyond their practicality, raised flower beds also bring visual interest to your garden.
How do you plant flowers in a raised bed?
Make sure the bed meets the soil, moisture, and sunlight requirements of the flowers you’re planting. Companion planting is a gardening strategy that involves growing plants in a combination that will benefit both species. In your raised bed, consider planting flowers, herbs, fruits, and vegetables that pair well together.
