How To Grow Borage: Edible Flowers, Pollinators & Garden Benefits
Updated: Aug 31
Vibrant blue borage attracts beneficial bugs like pollinators to your garden
What Is Borage?
Technically, borage is an herb that has a light cucumber flavor. In my garden, it's a flower and something I can use for tea or in salads.
Borage is one of my favorite garden flowers because it adds bright blue color, attracts pollinators, and gives me edible flowers I can actually use. Here’s why I grow it, what to know before planting, and how I handle the flowers and seeds.
Angie's Top 4 Reasons To Grow Borage
1. Borage Adds A Pop Of Color
Whether you choose to eat vibrant blue borage or not, growing it adds a beautiful blue color to your mostly green garden. I enjoy placing the edible flowers on top of my color-changing lemonade. I love looking at my mostly green garden and seeing my blue borage standing out.
2. You Can Eat Vibrant Blue Borage
Borage contains vitamins such as A & C and minerals iron & niacin. Not to mention, both the leaves & the flowers are edible. I'd recommend eating the young leaves as they will be less "hairy" than the larger, more mature leaves. The taste of borage is very mild and tastes like a mild cucumber.
3. Attract Pollinators To Your Garden
Have you ever had a zucchini flower but never produced a fruit? The cause may be that the flower is not getting pollinated. You could hand-pollinate, but I like to go the route of planting flowers. The centers of the borage flower provide a perfect landing spot for butterflies, bees, and even hummingbirds.
4. Borage Sows Itself
When your vibrant blue borage is finished blooming, you will see dried seed pods. If you don't want a large amount of borage next season, you will want to remove the dead dried seeds. This year, I left the majority of the dead borage - I cut it and spread it around my plot. I hope that next season I'll have borage all over my garden.
Until the next post in this series, check out all my gardening posts.
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