This beautiful traditional cottage garden plant is also known as Starflower.  Its gorgeous vivid blue flowers are edible and can be added as a garnish to drinks and look delightful added to salads, bringing a mild cucumber taste to your dish.
It is a wonderful addition to the sustainable garden as it vigorously accumulates nutrients from the soil preventing nutrient leaching.  It can also be used very effectively as a mulch, particularly beneficial chopped and dropped around flowering and fruiting plants.  It effectively stores a variety of nutrients which will be made available in the soil for other plants.  Although an annual, once planted you should always have this lovely plant in your garden as it will readily self-seed - though it doesn't self-seed to the point of being a nuisance.
It is also a great plant to add to the vegetable patch as it repels pests such as hornworms and, interplanted, it helps surrounding plants by increasing their pest and disease resistance. 
 
POLLINATORS:  This is a fantastic pollinator friendly plant as it is a magnet for bees, butterflies and moths and a must have as it refills its generous nectaries within a few minutes of being visited and drained by appreciative pollinators!
 
WILDLIFE:  A fabulous addition to the wildlife garden as this hardworking plant also attracts a wide variety of beneficial insects such as hoverflies, lacewings and parasictic wasps which prey on garden pests.