Many of us grow flowers simply because they’re pretty or have a lovely fragrance. Perhaps we grow them to attract pollinators to our vegetable gardens and orchards. How nice it is to know that blossoms can serve multiple functions in the garden because many of these are edible flowers! Today’s article highlights common edible garden and wildflowers, including how to use them in recipes for food, wellness, and even health care products.
Edible Flowers
There are a number of edible flowers, so I’m going to split them up into two categories to keep them organized: Garden Flowers and Wildflowers.
There will be some exceptions, of course. Some wildflowers are grown in gardens, for example. Don’t worry too much about how I’ve classified them.
Simply focus on the ones you’d like to try growing in your own garden, or the ones you’d like to look for while you’re out on foraging and herb walks.
If you need more ideas for delicious flower recipe ideas, grab your own copy of our popular book, Herbal Flower Recipes below!
Edible Garden Flowers
Edible flowers can be used in the homestead garden in many ways.
- Their blooms attract pollinators.
- They can be included in guild plantings or as companion plants.
- Some varieties like borage also produce large amounts of leaves and stalks which can be chopped down and applied to the garden soil as green mulch.
- Others, like hollyhocks, can grow so large that they provide privacy screening from neighbors.
A Few Examples of Common Edible Garden Flowers:
*Borage: Flowers and leaves are most commonly consumed. Pick leaves when young to avoid prickles – they taste like cucumber! Blossoms are lovely in salad and herbal ice cubes.
*Chives: Flowers and leaves, which can be added to salads, soups, savory spreads, cheeses, and breads. They also make a great companion plant, working well in any guild that has strawberries. With such a strong flavor, chives make excellent herbal vinegar, too.
*Calendula: Flowers are used in salads, cookies, and to naturally dye many items. They are also a highly valued wellness herb and can be found in a number of herbal preparations including this earache oil.
*Daylily: Side shoots and blooms can be battered and fried or added to skillet dishes. The blossoms are best fried or sautéed when they’re new and not yet opened because they’re more firm. Once the blossoms are open, they’re like a silky salad “green” that comes in a wide variety of colors, though the wild ones are typically orange. The roots are often used as a potato replacement, just smaller. As a nice treat, the blossoms have a sweet nectar at the base where you pop the bloom off the stem.
Hollyhock: Flowers are most commonly used for iced teas and in salads. They also make adorable flower dolls because their blossoms look like large skirts. The roots are often used for wellness in place of the marshmallow plant (which is a cousin of hollyhocks’) but it’s better to make a cold infusion than to eat the roots because they’re rather woody. Try your hand at this hollyhock soap – Nerdy Farm Wife can help you learn to make all kinds of soap!
Lavender: Flowers and leaves have been used aromatically as potpourri and to deter rodents for centuries. Both are also edible and can be found in such delights as cookies, scones, breads, and cakes. It pairs well with lemon as with this lavender lemonade recipe. Lavender is also a potent wellness herb, and is particularly suited to grow in dry, well draining and even slightly sandy soils. If you have clay soil, be prepared to elevate your lavender bed and put drainage rock at the base.
Lilac: Flowers are used in syrups, cookies, breads, cordials, and decorative sugars. Try this lilac flower jelly to start experimenting. These floral jellies make wonderful Christmas gifts, by the way!
Peony: Flowers are used in ice creams, iced teas, puddings, and syrups. Learn how to eat a peony and other things you can do with them.
Roses: Flowers are used similar to lilacs and peonies – we have a lovely herb and rose syrup recipe that we use on pancakes and in desserts that call for rose water. A favorite summer treat is rose petal ice cream. Rose is also used for wellness, in cosmetics and perfumes, as well as soaps. I prefer Rugosa roses for flavor and fragrance of both the petals and the hips.
Squash: Flowers from any of the squash family, winter or summer varieties, can be breaded and fried like fritters, added to pasta dishes, and eaten raw on salad and as stuffing in ravioli.
Here’s a fun fact: broccoli, cauliflower, and artichokes are all examples of edible flowers that we call vegetables. We eat the vegetative part attached to the stalk before these flowers bloom and set seed. We don’t think of them as anything other than tasty vegetables but they are, botanically speaking, flowers.
*The plants marked by a * make particularly good companion or guild plants that help the plants around them.
- Borage attracts pollinators and creates lots of usable biomass with leave and stalks that can be turned into compost tea.
- Calendula is loved by pollinators and will set a lot of viable seed every year. If your climate is conducive to it, calendula may self sow and pop up in spring providing semi-early season blooms for bees.
- Chives prevents bad bugs with its fragrant flowers and leaves.
- Daylilies can be planted in either very wet or even dry ground and their abundant foliage cools and shades the soil around it.
In permaculture, when a plant performs more than one job in the garden, we call it stacking functions. Flowers do this really well! For more useful flower ideas for your garden, consider planting bulbs with these 5 Perennial Bulbs for the homestead garden.
Edible Wildflowers
These edible flowers can be foraged, or harvested from wild spaces like pastures, meadows, and forests. Be sure you have permission to forage blooms wherever you are.
Bee balm: As a member of the mint family, bee balm has a minty, almost smoky flavor that stands out in both hot and iced tea. It also makes a wonderful honey oxymel for soothing throats in cold season.
Chicory: Flowers are used in salads and as garnish on desserts. The roots can be harvested, scrubbed, roasted, and brewed as a substitute for coffee along with dandelion roots.
Clovers: Red, pink, and white clover blossoms can be used in salads and sautés. The blooms, along with the leaves, are extremely nutritive and used in teas and other wellness preparations.
Daisy: The petals of daisies can be eaten in salads and have enough flavor to include in spring rolls and dumplings. They also have wellness properties that make them a good fit for cosmetics and soaps. Try these daisy lotion bars – so smooth!
Dandelion: Each part of the dandelion – roots, leaves, blooms – can be eaten. Young leaves are more palatable than older leaves. The leaves at any age are considered a dietary herbal bitter and good for digestion. The roots can be combined with chicory or brewed on their own as a healing concoction. Dandelion’s blossoms are incredibly versatile and can be used in any baked good, as well as cosmetics and soaps. Try this dandelion salve!
Daylily: This is just a reminder that they grow in the wild, too, so be sure to look for them.
Elder Flower: The blossom of the elder plant makes a delicious fritter and can also be brewed in a natural soda with kefir. Try this recipe for elder flower vinegar to save their sweet flavor for the year. Elder flowers also have wellness properties that make them a worthy inclusion in the home apothecary.
Wild Roses: This is another reminder that roses grow in the wild, too. If you don’t prefer to grow them in your garden, you can forage wild blossoms instead.
Violet: Both flowers and leaves are edible and can be included in salads, spring rolls, and teas. With mild wellness properties, violets are used quite often in decoctions and tinctures. The blooms are particularly suited to desserts. Learn to forage for early spring violets and gather enough to use in recipes for the whole year.
Wildflowers Can Be Useful in Other Ways, Too
Some of these blooms are suitable to be cultivated in your regular garden or plant guilds throughout the homestead. For example, I allow wild violets to enter all my gardens except the raised beds. Why? Because they make an excellent, cooling ground cover. The flowers fade with the summer but the foliage continues to thrive.
Clovers are also allowed free reign on my property because the flowers are useful, the foliage cools and covers the soil, and the roots gather nitrogen from the air and “fix” it on little nodes on their roots in the soil. This nitrogen benefits my soil by building its fertility.
Bee balm and dandelion attract pollinators, while daylilies provide shade to the soil and other plants in the hot afternoon sun.
Wildflower and Foraging Books
Be sure you have quality foraging manuals for wild edible flowers. Some of my favorites are:
- The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer
- Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer.
- Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb
You can also ask at your local conservation department for information specific to your area.
Experiment with Versatile Edible Flowers
Many, if not most of these edible flowers can be used in similar recipes like:
- Teas, hot and iced, as well as hot chocolate.
- Baked goods like cookies, muffins, scones, breads, and pancakes.
- Doughs for pasta and marzipan for decorating cakes.
- Creamy desserts like ice cream, pudding, milkshakes, and dessert cheeses and compound butters.
- Savory foods like soups, sauces, dressings, salads, sautéed dishes, and casseroles.
- Naturally dyed items like frostings, gelatin, homemade sprinkles and decorative sugars.
In short, don’t hesitate to add edible flowers to any dish!
Start with These Edible Flowers
If the idea of eating flowers is new to you, start with three of my favorites.
- The borage flower is one of my favorites to add to a salad because of its true-blue color. With borage, though, be sure to remove all the stem parts because they’re a little itchy.
- Dandelions can certainly be added to a salad but, again, you’ll want to removed all stem parts (including the green on the bloom) because they taste very plant-y. They are also wonderful in candy, gelatin, and cookies.
- For the calendula flower, simply popping off the petals and scattering them in your salad (or ice cube tray, or frosted cake) will produce lovely splashes of color.
Edible Flower Recipes
Take a simple salad, or any meal, and turn it into something special with some edible flowers using these posts:
- Salad with Wild Greens and Flowers from Learning and Yearning
- Dandelion Egg Noodles from Homespun Seasonal Living
- Chive Blossom Oil and Vinegar from Grow, Forage, Cook, Ferment
Edible Flower Dessert Recipes
Don’t think I forgot dessert! Here are some special treats that use edible flowers:
- Dandelion Forsythia Jelly from Homestead Lady
- Dandelion Candy also from us here at Homestead Lady
- Dandelion Paleo Cookies from our kids here at HL
- Strawberry Dandelion Cake with Berry Cream Frosting from Schneider Peeps
- Violet Gelatin Recipe (with a list of even more flower foods!) from Homestead Lady
- Homemade Sodas from Homestead Honey
I love how much wisdom & beauty you’ve learned from your grandmother!!! So wonderful, I hope I can create the same gardening memories and education for my grandchildren one day 🙂
Thanks, Isis! You’re certainly on the right road to teaching your children – your gardens are always an inspiration.
I love that you’ve shared your knowledge of this. I’m going to pass it on to a friend of mine who has a farm and has started a small garden on the property. I think she might find it useful. Thank you.
So glad it was helpful, Jenny! I wish your friend great success with her garden. If she needs help with anything, just have her stop on by!