Chaos Gardening

Learn about chaos gardening and how you can incorporate it into your own landscape. It's an easy way to enjoy the beauty of nature with minimal effort.

Have you heard about this new (well new to me) gardening trend? It's called chaos gardening and is similar to rewilding your garden with a more purposeful intent.

What Is Chaos Gardening?

Chaos gardening is exactly what it sounds like. It's a laid-back approach to gardening in which rules and traditional gardening methods are tossed aside.  Instead of detailed landscape plans, chaos gardening allows nature and survival of the fittest to grow and build the garden.

Why Choose Chaos Gardening?

Low Maintenance

When you are starting from scratch with seeds and small plants you will need to water regularly. However, as the garden gets established you will need to water it less often to barely at all.

Chaos gardening also calls for a relaxed approach to weeding. After all many weeds are beautiful and native plants to the area.

This practice also suggests that you should not cut back plants at the end of the season but rather allow them to self seed to fill in the garden even more.

Promotes Biodiversity

Chaos gardening offers food and shelter to wildlife. This is especially true for native plants that quickly adapt to the environment.

Leaving plants alone at the end of the season gives wildlife extra protection and food for the winter months.

Encourages Creativity

Gardening without rules will naturally promote creativity. You can get as wild as you like. Mix herbs and vegetables in the space. So many herbs and vegetables are beautiful and can easily be incorporated with flowers. Enjoy watching the magic of what grows and new volunteers show up in the garden.

How to Create a Chaos Garden

Choose a Location

If you are starting from scratch choosing a sunny location is best. This way your options for flowers, vegetables, and herbs will be the greatest as just about all plants thrive in full sunlight. You can get away with a somewhat shady spot but you will need to do a little research to find the plant life that will enjoy shade.

If you already have established garden beds you can scatter more annuals and perennials to make them into chaos gardens.

Want to start small? Try creating a chaos garden in a raised bed for your garden space or make it a container garden with a large pot.

Choose A Variety Of Plants

Choose plants and seeds that will thrive in your climate according to your hardiness zone. Choose plants that are known for their ability to self-seed. Flowers such as Columbine, Forget Me Nots, Rose Campion, and herbs like chives are just a few examples.

Add in native plants. Native wildflowers will attract pollinators and beneficial insects such as bees and butterflies and help them thrive in your garden. Don't worry too much about the size of the plants, just see what happens. That's half of the fun.

Look into companion planting. This is where you grow vegetables and flowers together that offer mutual benefits to each other's growth, add shelter, and deter pests.

Plant In Random Patterns

Scatter seed packets into the garden. Chaos gardening touts deliberate randomness of planting to create a vibrant area where nature leads the way.

Some people even suggest creating a chaos gardening for their front yard. That would be quite the experience. However, just make sure if you live in a place with an HOA that you aren't violating any rules or local regulations.

In Conclusion, I think this type of gardening is for me. I've always loved cottage gardens, free flowing rambling flowers, and lots of variety. As I get older I love the idea of a lower maintenance garden filled with pollinators and the unpredictability of watching what Mother Nature does next.