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The Best Lavender Companion Plants For Your Garden

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Lavender bushes make a beautiful addition to vegetable gardens, perennial borders, container gardens, herb gardens, tea gardens, and even the cut flower garden! The flowers have so many uses and smell simply heavenly. But lavender is a bit of an odd duckling in the garden. Lavender loves the heat and sun, thrives in poor soil, and doesn’t require a lot of water. So when you’re looking for good companion plants for lavender, you will want to find plants that share those similar growing conditions.

So what are the best companion plants to plant with lavender?

Plant lavender alongside brassicas like cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in the vegetable garden. You can also plant lavender with flowers like roses, echinacea, alliums, yarrow, gaillardia, sedum, and African daisies. Lavender is also at home in the herb garden planted next to Mediterranian herbs such as rosemary, sage, oregano, and thyme.

Want to know what not to plant alongside your lavender? Read on!

Violet colored sprigs of lavender growing in a lush green garden.

Companion Plant With Lavender

The companion plants that grow best with lavender are those heat-loving plants that enjoy full sun, light watering conditions, and generally poor soil. Growing lavender isn’t difficult when you understand what the plant needs and doesn’t like.

We have a few plants on this list that, although they have different growing conditions, can be accommodated to grow alongside lavender and benefit from its pest repelling properties.

Learn More:

Brassicas

Placing lavender flowers around the cabbage patch is a good idea if you want to repel and prevent cabbage moths. Lavender’s strong scent is a pest repellant and confuses pests away from your brassica crops.

Plant the lavender on the outside rim to be able to water your vegetable crops without harming the lavender. Better yet, add pots of lavender around your brassica crops to give the lavender its best-growing environment.

Shrub Roses

A perfect cottage garden pairing is pink roses and purple lavender plants. For best results, plant with shrub roses and floribunda roses.

You can also plant lavender behind low-growing drift roses.

Companion planting lavender will help protect your roses from hungry deer and rabbits who don’t like the smell of lavender. The heavily scented flowers can also act as a trap crop for aphids, keeping them away from your rose bushes.

Leave adequate space between your roses and lavender, especially with new plantings. Those small newly planted rose bushes will multiply and require room to spread.

Roses will also require more water than the lavender, so spacing is essential to ensure roses can get the water they need and the lavender doesn’t get overwatered.

Roses companion planted with lavender underneath.

Echinacea

Try planting echinacea if you want another beautiful lavender companion for a cottage garden or perennial border.

Both plants require very similar growing conditions and fair well in drought conditions. They also both need well-draining soil and full sun.

This combination of flowers will bring pollinating bees to the yard in droves.

  • Learn More: Echinacea is incredibly easy to grow from seed, although flowers planted this year may not provide blooms until the following year. See this list that we put together if you’re looking for a list of easy-to-grow flowers from seed.
A flower bed planted with daisies, lavender and coneflower illustrating how well these lavender companion plants get along.

Alliums

Alliums grow exceptionally well with lavender as they both enjoy similar growing conditions. Both are drought-tolerant and require the same sunlight and soil.

You can plant alliums as a lavender companion in perennial borders, foundation plantings, cottage garden settings, or containers.

A lovely purple head of allium against a bright green background.

Yarrow

Yarrow, like lavender, thrives in poor soil and can is very drought tolerant. If planted together with lavender as a companion, both plants will grow well.

Both plants enjoy well-draining soil and full sun and will not compete for nutrients or water.

Together they make a lovely combination of colors for a floral display.

lavender companion planted with yellow yarrow in the garden.

Thyme, Oregano, Sage, and Rosemary

Thyme, oregano, and rosemary share almost identical growing conditions to lavender.

They all grow in the full hot sun, sandy, well-drained soil and require minimal watering.

Lavender, thyme, oregano, sage, and rosemary are all-powerful pest deterrents and readily attract pollinators like bees to your gardens. In addition, when planted densely under the lavender, thyme can act as a ground cover to help provide shelter for beneficial insects.

Plant these lavender companion herbs together in an herb garden and watch them thrive!

Learn More: Growing herbs is easier than you think. We have a complete guide on how to grow many popular herbs from seed to harvest:

bungles of freshly picked sage, rosemary and thyme on a rustic white wooden background.

Gaillardia

Gaillardia (or blanket flower), with its brightly colored flowers of orange, red, and yellow, makes a powerful contrasting display with lavender and is a good companion plant.

Because the blanket flower loves the full sun and can grow in various soils, it makes a non-fussy companion with lavender.

companion planting lavender and blanketflower together in the garden. The bright red and yellow flowers are highly contrasted against the lilac colored lavender buds.

African Daisies

African daisies thrive in hot, dry conditions and only require a bit of water once a week. 

They will not compete with your lavender plants and require very little care. 

A plot of brightly colored African daisies in coral, yellow, pink and violet.

Black-Eyed Susan

Like the African daisies, black-eyed Susans only require a bit of water once a week and enjoy the same growing conditions as lavender. They also make an eye-popping display on a perennial border.

Learn More: See our complete guide on how to grow black-eyed Susan flowers from seed to bloom.

Bright yellow brown eyed susans interplanted with lavender.

Fruit Trees

Planting lavender around fruit trees will help encourage bees to help with pollination.

Lavender also helps prevent coddling moths, so planting it near or around apple trees will help keep pest populations lower.

A ripe fresh apple hanging from an apple tree against an out of focus sunset.

Harmful Companion Plants for Lavender

Garden plants that make poor lavender companions are any that require shade, cool conditions, and fertile soil. Here we have listed four plants that seem like they would be good companions but are too incompatible with the growing conditions that lavender requires.

Lavender planted in the shade with high moisture, and good soil will die out before the growing season.

Camellias

Camellias and lavender require too many different environmental requirements. Soil, water, and even sunlight are too different to accommodate both plants. As a companion plant, camellias are better suited to grow alongside other plants like hostas, rhododendrons, or azaleas.

Bright pink camelia plant.

Mint

Mint plants are also incompatible with lavender as companion plants.

Plants like mint require fertile soil with lots of moisture which is an environment that will stunt or destroy your lavender—plant mint with other plants that enjoy similar growing environments like cabbage, carrots, and cauliflower.

Mint is also highly invasive, so if you are considering adding it to any area in your garden, add barriers to help contain the plant from spreading. You can add pots of mint to your garden beds instead of planting seeds.

Fresh sprig of mint against a bright white background.

Hostas

Hostas and lavender are other examples of incompatible plants due to growing condition requirements. For example, where lavender thrives in the hot sun, hostas require cool dappled shade.

Different varities of hosta planted in containers .

Impatiens

Impatience is another shade-loving plant that requires good moisture and cool conditions to thrive and will not grow well with lavender.

Although the combination sounds lovely, the growing requirements are too varied to support both plants.

A shady woodland garden planted with mounds of brightly colored impatiens.

Garden Benefits From Companion Planting

Companion planting in the garden has many positive benefits. All plants have partners who can help improve plant health and soil, improve yields, and help contain and repel pests. 

Companion Plants Attract Pollinators

Plants with brightly-colored blooms that provide food like nectar and pollen will attract pollinators. Pollinators are an integral part of our garden systems; without them, crops that require pollination will fail to yield.  

Companion Plants Will Attract Beneficial Insects: 

Like herbs and flowers, many companion plants will attract beneficial insects like parasitic wasps, ladybugs, ground beetles, and spiders. These valuable insects will assist in repelling and controlling populations of pests in our gardens. 

Repel Those Pesky Insects:

Some companion plants have powerful scents that control common garden pests like squash bugs and repel cabbage loopers and tomato worms. 

They Can Also Improve Soil Conditions 

Marigolds, as an example, will destroy root-knot nematodes in the soil when they are allowed to decompose in the ground.

Companion Planting can Help Prevent Weeds.

Densely underplanting crops like tomatoes or carrots with vegetables like spinach or lettuce will help shade out and prevent weed development in the garden. 

Companion Planting can Help Prevent Diseases. 

Diseases are spread quickly through gardens when plants of the same type are planted close together. Adding different species throughout the garden plan can help break up families and slow the spread of diseases. 

  • Learn More: If you are interested in companion planting, check out our companion planting 101 guide to learn how to grow healthier gardens.
An infographic showing two drawings of people gardening along with the a listing of the benefits of companion planting. Text from the infographic is repeated in the text portion of the post.

Lavender Companion Plants In The Garden

Lavender has its place all over the gardens in your yard, from landscaping with shrub roses to pest control in the vegetable garden. These beautiful flowers are powerful pest deterrents and attractive invitations to pollinators.

There are many compatible lavender companion plants to choose from and if your favorite isn’t on this list, take a look at its required growing conditions to see if they are compatible.

Looking For More Flower Growing Inspiration?

We love to grow, dry, and arrange flowers all summer long. Check our guides below for more information and inspiration:

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