The Rosemary Companion Plant That Makes Your Garden Even More Pest-Resistant

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

You're no doubt growing rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) in your yard to enjoy its flavorful sprigs of herbs in your homemade meals. When planting, go easy on yourself. It's a hard truth every plant owner needs to accept. But you may have also noticed that plant's ability to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects to your yard, allowing you to take an organic approach to edible or ornamental landscaping. Rosemary is one of several flowering herbs you can plant to attract pollinators. If you want to make your garden even more pest-resistant, you can grow companions alongside rosemary, such as sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima), a beautiful annual with mounds of tiny flowers that will help protect your garden.

Sweet alyssum is a long-blooming bedding plant that you might recognize from the benches of your local garden center, but it's actually very easy to grow from seed as a rosemary companion plant. It has small, linear leaves, clusters of petite, four-petaled flowers, and a mounding form. Depending on the variety, it can reach just 3 inches in height or up to 12 inches tall. The flowers are available in a few different colors, in shades of pink, purple, or white. Sweet alyssum has dense growth, making it perfect for a ground cover that will blanket your space in beneficial insect-attracting blooms throughout spring, summer, and fall.

When choosing companion plants in your garden, it's important that the two selections have the same cultural needs if you're going to grow them in the same bed. Rosemary, a perennial in USDA Hardiness Zones 8 to 10, thrives in full sun, where the soil has good drainage, and is moist to occasionally dry. Sweet alyssum grows perfectly in these same conditions, but can handle part shade as well, so it's okay if the branches of the larger herb throw some shadows across the groundcover annual that you're cultivating as a companion.

When grown in the conditions described above, both these companion plants will flourish and can provide valuable services in making your garden more pest-resistant. Sweet alyssum may look like nothing more than a pretty bedding plant, but it's amazing at attracting beneficial insects like ladybugs, hoverflies, parasitoid wasps, and syrphid flies. All of these arthropod visitors feed on the nectar of tiny Lobularia maritima flowers, and in return help to keep pest populations under control. Since white sweet alyssum flowers are more fragrant than other colors, you may want to stick with a white-bloomed cultivar like 'Carpet of Snow' from Everwilde Farms. 'Carpet of Snow' is also low growing, reaching 6 inches tall, so it won't shade out your young rosemary transplants. . Add some unique bird feeders to attract feathered friends.