Growing Chamomile: Tips at a Glance
With both perennial and annual varieties, chamomile is a fragrant flowering herb with a purpose. Whether you're growing its delicate white flowers for ornamental purposes or for culinary or medicinal purposes, chamomile will thrive in full sun and well-drained soil.
- Type Flowering herb
- Lifespan Annual or perennial
- USDA Zones 3-9
- Light Sun, partial shade
- Water Well-drained soil
- How to Plant Seed or seedlings
- Design Tip Cottage garden
- Companions Kale, beans
- Days to Maturity 56
Chamomile: A Field Guide
Chamomile tea gets all the attention, but this annual flowering herb proves its usefulness in many other ways as well: its calming, medicinal effects have been appreciated for centuries and its cheery white aster flowers with yellow centers are a valuable ornamental plant in a cottage garden or informal flower bed.
A great companion plant in vegetable gardens, Matricaria recutita has a strong scent which can deter unwanted bugs that prey on your edible garden’s crops of kale and squash. (If you water chamomile infrequently, the plant will produce a stronger smell and be a more powerful repellent.)
Don’t overlook: perennial chamomile, a low-growing creeper with white daisy flowers. Used as a ground cover, Chamaemelum nobile will form a dense mat of attractive gray-green foliage.