Benefits of Borage - Learn Why You Should Grow Borage in Your Garden

Have you ever wondered what to do with borage other than watch it take over your garden as it scatters its mouse-dropping-like seeds everywhere? Here are some ways you can reap the benefits of borage, while still providing pollinators an excellent source of nectar.

Photo Credit Niki K - borage plant growing in her beautiful rock garden

Borage Provides Free Compost

Don’t hesitate to pull out any unwanted borage and use it to amend and fertilize your soil. Those deep taproots that borage plants develop, pull up nutrients under the soil and up into the leaves. If you “chop and drop” you can simply leave the uprooted plant on the soil surface where it can temporarily act as a mulch to keep other plant roots cool, or to conserve moisture during a dry spell. As the plants wither away and decompose, they will add organic matter to the soil that you can then work in, thus amending the soil.

Another way you can use discarded borage is in something I call a stink bucket: a 5-gallon bucket with decomposing borage in a bit of water that I tuck into a remote corner of the garden to putrefy for a few weeks. This stinky concoction can then be diluted and fed to hungry annuals such as squash, sunflowers, corn and tomatoes. Since commercially made fertilizer is in short supply these days, why not use borage to add some nutrients and organic matter back into your soil?

Photo Credit Niki K - a young borage plant

Borage Provides Entertainment

Impress visitors at your next summer barbeque with ice cubes that contain borage’s blue star-shaped flowers. Simply pick a few borage flowers and add them to an ice cube tray and pour over with water and freeze.

If you want to entertain a la Martha Stewart, try decorating a cake or cupcakes with sugar-coated borage flowers. All you have to do is first dip borage flowers in water, to give the sugar something to stick to, then dip into granulated sugar to give those little stars a twinkle.

To drive home borage’s versatility: if you ever run out of cucumbers but have borage growing in the garden, you can chop up some borage leaves to get the same cucumber flavour and aroma. Of course, this wouldn’t work for all recipes but you could create things like borage tzatziki, a Pimm’s cup or similar mocktail. Let borage be your friend in the kitchen, as well as in the garden!

Borage for Bees

If you don’t have the bandwidth or desire to compost or create culinary delights with borage, then simply grow it for the bees. Borage is a magnet for many beneficial insects and pollinators and can reportedly boost honey production when planted near beehives. Its nectar is easily accessible, plentiful and high energy, something that busy bees need throughout the summer. All you need to do is scatter some borage seeds directly in the soil, after your last frost. It will return year after year, with hardly any additional effort and the bees will thank you by improving pollination in your other crops, especially if

you grow strawberries, raspberries or tomatoes.

Photo Credit Niki K - Borage growing in her backyard

So now you know what to do with all that borage. And if you’ve ever been discouraged by other gardeners who warned you not to grow borage, you can be assured that it’s well worth growing, even if it’s just for the bees.

Shop Borage Seeds at CoCreative Seeds

Bio: About the Author, Niki K & CoCreative Seeds

One of Niki’s earliest gardening memories was when she was five years old and her grandmother stuck a rose stem into the ground and put a plastic pop bottle over it to create a protective cloche. She can’t recall if the rose cutting succeeded in taking root, but many years later in 2017, Niki started growing tomatoes, cucumbers, ornamental corn, lavender and borage in the Czech Republic.

Niki moved to Turner Valley in 2020 and gradually transformed a garden with a deer and thistle problem into a colourful and productive place with a greenhouse, raised beds for veggies, rock garden, gravel garden and a thriving apple tree. In 2025 she met Maddie through her daughter’s daycare and together they joined forces and bought CoCreative Seeds from Aussie-bound founder Barb Hazenveld.

Niki’s goal is to continue Barb’s legacy of growing dependable and productive seeds, to harvest and dry as many herbs as she can grow, and to spread the word that gardening know-how should be passed down from generation to generation.