Companion planting helps vegetable gardens shine

What do you really want from your vegetable garden?

Food, of course. But surely, food that's healthy and safe — and while you're at it, why not opt for beauty to the eye and enticement for beneficial insects and pollinators? Companion planting of vegetables and culinary herbs addresses all of these and more.

When the Rodale Institute, founders of Organic Gardening magazine, began touting the use of "companion plants" to serve as "bait" for bugs that would ordinarily attack a certain vegetable crop over a half-century ago, the secondary benefit of beauty soon became apparent. This, in itself, was important because it manifested a problem to which no one had as yet paid much attention.