Embrace the chaos

If (like us) your social feeds feature a huge number of gardening accounts, you’ve probably come across the term ‘chaos gardening’. While much of this approach is left to nature, there is some method to the madness.

A boon for biodiversity, chaos gardening takes a natural approach to garden planning, with flowers growing alongside vegetables, plants left to go to seed, and straight rows given over to haphazardness. With warmer weather just around the corner, early spring is a good time to get started on a chaos garden. Just imagine the wild-growing, wing-whirring environment you could have out there by mid-summer!

How to go wild in the garden

Some chaos gardeners simply take a variety of seeds from leftover packets or saved from previous harvests, mix these up in a bowl and scatter on a fertile patch of ground. (Seed bombs are another option for hard-to-access spaces!)

Others take a slightly more restrained approach, giving over just patches of their garden to a wild mix and using different seed mixes in different spots to create a sense of organic order. No matter how you do it, the idea is to let nature take its course, with plants self-seeding and flourishing at will.

In nature, plants support, protect and nourish one another – and that is the goal here. To help nature along, add a variety of plant types, including some pest repellants like basil and chives, tap roots like sorrel and parsnip, nitrogen fixers like peas and beans, compost activators like borage and fennel, and pollinators like nasturtium and marigold.

This approach allows plants to help each other out, all bringing their own benefits to the table for the greater good. Helpful insects and microorganisms will be attracted to this style of garden too, as it provides plenty of food sources and places to hide.

Natural order

Paths and borders lend structure to your chaos garden while creating benefits for the soil at the same time.

Log stacks and rocks placed among your beds creates definition but is in keeping with the organic aesthetic. Similarly, curved, ambling pathways will look great among high-growing flower heads and sweet smelling herbs. Create beneficial pathways by laying cardboard across the grass, covered over deeply with sawdust or wood chip mulch. This will weigh down the cardboard and create healthy soil beneath your path as the organic matter breaks down. It may need to be topped up occasionally, but the pathways should last well and provide a mud-free track through your garden in winter.

It can be a liberating experience to throw away the rulebook and let nature do what it does best.

If you want to retain some traditional vegetable beds, you can still section off one part of your garden as a chaos bed. Or you could choose to go for a low-mow or no-mow lawn, allowing helpful weeds like dandelions to root at will. Sprinkle a wildflower mix across the grass and you could have a beautiful meadow for the summer!

Maintaining your spot of chaos

Like every gardening recommendation ever written, a chaos garden will work best in a sunny spot with well drained, fertile soils. If you’re starting out this spring, consider preparing the soil before you start, by adding compost or some bags of worm castings to the mix.

If you’re not in a hurry, though, allowing plants to die away and re-seed without intervention is also a great way to naturally enrich your soil. It may look a bit messy for a while but it should spring back better next season. Market gardeners use cover crops in this way, to increase the amount of organic matter in the soil and replenish the nutrients after a crop finishes.

Once seeded, keep up with regular watering, especially if the weather has been dry. Before too long, seedlings should start to sprout up. You may like to dot some more established plants throughout to lend shade and structure for the young ones. Chaos planting below trees also looks great and prevents less helpful weeds from popping up.

A little like creating a beautiful abstract painting, a successful chaos garden does require some modicum of control. However, it can be a liberating experience to throw away the rulebook and let nature do what it does best. Once everything is growing and thriving, the last job is to pull up a garden chair and join the birds and bugs among all that beautiful chaos.