10 Reasons To Plant Comfrey in Your Garden
Comfrey is a wonder plant, beloved of permaculture practitioners and other organic gardeners around the globe. But why is comfrey so useful in a garden and what are its uses? In this guide, we will introduce you to this useful plant and talk about some of the main reasons why it can be so beneficial to plant comfrey in your garden.
What is Comfrey?
Comfrey (Symphytum ssp.) are herbaceous perennial plants that grow well in almost any soil type, but prefer reasonably moist conditions in full sun or partial/dappled shade.
These plants have large leaves, and white/pink-purple dangling tubular or bell shaped flowers. Comfrey plants typically grow 1-1.5m tall, with a similar spread. They are very hardy and will grow extremely well in most UK gardens.
Which Comfrey to Grow
You might also consider common comfrey, Symphytum officinale. However, there are other comfrey plants that share many characteristics in common. Among these other comfreys, one of the most useful in the UK is Russian Comfrey Bocking 14.
Symphytum uplandicum – bocking 14 is a Russian comfrey which was developed in the 1950s by Lawrence D. Hills, who founded the Henry Doubleday Research Association. This is an excellent comfrey to choose as it is sterile and will not set seed, which avoids issues with invasiveness that can be experienced with some other members of this genus.
By traditional gardeners, comfrey is sometimes considered to be a weed. But if you make sure to get the sterile Bocking 14 variety of seeds then they will not self-seed so comfrey will stay where you want it to be.
Making a permanent comfrey patch in your garden or incorporating it into perennial growing areas is a great idea – just be sure you definitely won’t want to move it later as the deep roots, and the plants ability to regrow from root sections means that it is very difficult if not impossible to move the plants once they are established.
Reasons to Grow Comfrey in Your Garden
The main reasons to grow comfrey in your garden relate either to the benefits in conferred while growing in your garden, or to the various yields this plant can provide to us for use in our gardens and our homes.
Comfrey is commonly used in a garden:
- As a companion plant in a forest garden or guild, or other perennial planting scheme where it brings benefits to fruit trees and other plants.
- In a dedicated patch which is mown/ chopped and dropped to provide material for composting/ mulches/ liquid feeds for use in kitchen garden beds.
- To form barriers around a certain growing area to prevent the ingress of grasses or weeds and create good ground cover.
- As an ornamental and structural plant in a mixed, informal, wildlife-friendly and low-maintenance perennial border.
Below, we will discuss the various reasons for growing comfrey plant in a little more depth.
What Benefits Does Comfrey Provide in a Garden?
Comfrey is a plant that confers numerous benefits while growing in a garden. Our first five reasons to grow this plant relate to its role within the garden ecosystem, and the benefits that comfrey plant can provide to other plants and wildlife, and to you, as the gardener, while it is in active growth.
1. Comfrey is a ‘Dynamic Accumulator’ Plant
Comfrey is a ‘dynamic accumulator’ with an extremely deep tap root, which will draw up nutrients from deep in the soil where the roots of many other plants cannot reach. When the plant naturally grows and dies back in autumn, the nutrients it contains return to the top layers of the soil where they can be taken up by other plants.
Comfrey also accumulates certain essential plant nutrients more effectively than other plants, gathering and storing these nutrients within its tissues. Though it does not accumulate specific nutrients in as high a quantity as a number of other plants, the balance of nutrients its tissues contain still make it an extremely useful plant.
As you will find out below, this property makes comfrey useful in several ways for the maintenance of fertility in your garden.
2. Comfrey Attracts Pollinators To Your Garden
Comfrey plant, when in flower, can also provide for pollinators in your garden, and aid in attracting bees and other pollinators to your space. It is a nectary plant, producing plenty of nectar for the insects we require for pollination in our gardens.
3. Comfrey Helps With Organic Pest Control
As an attractant, nectary plant, comfrey while in flower will also help to bring insects that help with organic pest control into your garden. In organic gardens, we understand that insects are crucial within the garden ecosystem. Comfrey helps us ensure that we don’t just have pest species but also the predatory insects and other wildlife that keeps pest populations under control.
4. Comfrey Suppresses Grass or Weed Ingress Into Growing Areas
As a hardy and resilient plant, comfrey can be useful in outcompeting and keeping out grass and unwanted weeds from growing areas. Comfrey, for example, can be planted along a fence-line or around the edge of a border to prevent ingress of unwanted species into the space – covering the soil and growing strongly to outcompete other species.
5. Comfrey Provides Visual Appeal
While its benefits to ecological function are of course more important, it is also worthwhile noting that especially while it is in flower, comfrey can also be an attractive flowering plant that can provide visual appeal in your garden – year after year.
What is Comfrey Used For?
Comfrey is not only useful while it is in active growth. We can also harvest and use comfrey ourselves in a number of different ways. So we can also grow comfrey in order to obtain a number of yields for ourselves and our gardens.
6. Comfrey Can Be Used As a Medicinal Plant
Comfrey has a long history of use as a medicinal plant. And while internal use may not be advisable for those without extensive knowledge of herbalism, it can be topically applied externally for a number of reasons. (However, if you are interested in medicinal plants, you should always seek the advice of a professional.)
7. Comfrey Can Supplement the Diet of Chickens or Other Livestock
While we do not eat comfrey ourselves, other animals will certainly love to do so. If you keep chickens or other livestock, then comfrey can also make a good supplement to their diet.
My chickens loved comfrey leaves and would eagerly snap up any leaves that could reach – especially while the leaves were relatively small and tender. And the chickens can benefit from the nutrients these leaves contain.
8. Comfrey is Great For Composting
Earlier, we mentioned about how comfrey is considered a dynamic accumulator plant. Because of its ability to gather and store key plant nutrients, and because of its quick growth, it is a fantastic plant to grow to maintain fertility in your garden.
One way to use it is simply to chop the leaves and add them to any composting system, where they will break down quickly and work as a ‘compost activator’ to move the decomposition process along.
Due to the nutrients they contain, they will actually help your compost to break down more quickly, meaning that you can return those deep down nutrients to the surface of the soil in your garden.
9. Comfrey is a Marvellous Mulch Plant
This dynamic accumulator and swift growing plant is also commonly used as mulch material.
Often, comfrey is simply chopped and dropped around fruit trees, shrubs or other plants in the perennial systems where it might be grown. I use this technique in my own forest garden.
It is also added as a mulch around crops in an annual vegetable garden. For example, I like to add comfrey leaves to the planting trench when planting potatoes. And I also typically use a mulch of comfrey leaves around the tomato plants in my polytunnel.
10. Comfrey Can Be Used to Make an Organic Liquid Plant Feed/ Fertilizer
As well as using comfrey in making compost or as a mulch, comfrey plant can also be made into a liquid plant feed, or ‘comfrey tea’ to feed growing plants.
This involves simply placing comfrey leaves and stems that you have harvested into a bucket with a lid to break down over time, either with water or without it. This stinky brew rich in nutrients (especially potassium) is then diluted to the appropriate concentration and used to water plants that require a feed.
I use this on my tomato plants, for example. It can also be beneficial for a number of other flowering and fruiting plants in your vegetable patch or elsewhere in your garden.
Add to all the above that comfrey is just so very easy to grow, easy to maintain and care for, and easy to propagate and you can begin to see just how useful this common permaculture plant really can be.
References:
https://www.ruralsprout.com/comfrey-liquid-fertilizer/
https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/108577/symphytum-x-uplandicum-bocking-14/details
