Dog-Friendly Plants to Include in Your Garden

You bought your backyard for your dog, didn’t you? I see you. Let’s make it an oasis for both you AND your canine.

I created a Sniff Station (as I call it) in my backyard in summer 2022 to help provide my dog enrichment. A Sniff Station is a collection of dog safe plants intended to encourage your dog to sniff.

NOTE: You don’t need to have a backyard to have a Sniff Station — A few pots on a balcony or even a sunny window in your space would work great!

According to PetMD, dogs have hundreds of millions of scent receptors, compared to a human’s 6 million. Dogs also devote about 40 times more brain volume to decoding smells than humans.

All of that to say, sniffing can be a very enriching and tiring activity for dogs.

I created my Sniff Station with a variety of smelly and colorful plants (did you dogs don’t actually see in black and white? They can discern blue and yellow, but not red and green) to entice my dog, Charlie, to interact with them. Everything I used to build it is linked here (commissionable link).

Let’s get into what plants you can include in your dog’s Sniff Station:

Herbs

Basil*
Cilantro
Dill
Fennel
Lemon Balm
Mint*
Rosemary**
Sage
Thyme

Flowers

Impatiens
Lavender*
Marigolds
Pansies
Petunias
Zinnias

Other

Ferns
Spider Plant

* Can be dangerous if a large amount is ingested. Use caution if your dog likes to eat plants.

** Not recommended for dogs susceptible to seizures

Something else to note is that I designed my Sniff Station with movable pots to be able to rotate them for a few reasons:

If Charlie takes a nibble and the plant needs time to recover at the top of the trellis
To give each plant optimal sun if needed
For variety! Charlie can only reach the bottom two rows, so rotating them can give her more things to sniff. But it’s important to know that your dog doesn’t have to approach and/or interact with the Sniff Station to reap its benefits. Because of their strong sense of smell, the plants odor will fill your backyard and your dog can enjoy it that way! Sometimes I catch Charlie sniffing the air on a particularly windy day, when the scent of the Sniff Station plants are wafting around.

Any questions? Feel free to comment below or send me a message on Instagram!