While some gardeners lean towards meticulous planning and straight rows, a refreshing and wildly creative approach is blossoming in backyards everywhere. While the term “chaos” might suggest disorder, chaos gardening is more about freedom – freedom from rigid rules, uniformity, and expectations. It invites you to trust nature’s creativity and embrace the beautiful, blooming surprise that follows.
Chaos gardening completely challenges gardening rules and involves scattering a diverse mix of flower seeds across an area of your garden with minimal intervention, allowing nature to take its course. The result? A lush, unexpected tapestry of blooms that can surprise even the most seasoned gardener.
What Is Chaos Gardening?
The idea behind chaos gardening is that plants are left to their own devices to thrive. Instead of carefully spacing each seed and mapping out garden beds by height and colour, you simply use a pre-made pollinator mix or create your own blend by mixing seeds of annual and perennial flowering varieties.
Popular choices for chaos gardening include easy-to-grow species that pollinators like bees and butterflies love, such as cosmos, alyssum, marigolds, and nasturtiums. Other great choices are native species for their ability to thrive on neglect, such as varieties of everlasting daisy, swan river daisy, and golden everlasting.
A chaos garden can be created by simply using a Mr Fothergill’s seed shaker mix. Available in both bee- and butterfly-friendly varieties, plus, clever mixes such as the Cottage Garden and Scented Flower varieties provide the perfect variety of species if you’re after a certain theme in your garden. Each mix contains 100 grams of Shake and Rake mix (10g of seeds, 90g of vermiculite) and includes specifically selected varieties combined with vermiculite for even seed distribution. Vermiculite is also excellent for helping maintain moisture levels, which is an important factor in the germination of seed, particularly when it comes to chaos gardening.
How to Sow a Chaos Garden
After selecting your mixes, sowing a chaos garden is really simple. Choose a sunny patch of soil and clear it of all weeds or grass. Loosen the earth with a rake or hoe, then mix your flower seeds with some sand or soil for even distribution, or use a shaker mix with vermiculite. Scatter the mixture over the area, water gently, and let nature do the rest. Shaker mixes make scattering incredibly easy, with the Scented Flower Garden Seed Shaker and Bee-Friendly Flower Shaker mixes producing excellent results. Once seeds are sown, you can top with a thin layer of compost to protect them from birds and wind.
What Are the Benefits of Chaos Gardening?
Chaos gardening is a really simple method for creating a wild and wonderful garden, but it also comes with a range of benefits!
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Beginner-friendly: Due to its simple sowing method, chaos gardening is an excellent method for new gardeners to try out. It is also particularly good for children looking to get involved with gardening.
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Attracts Pollinators: By sowing a large variety of species, chaos gardening encourages all types of pollinators to visit your garden.
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Minimal Equipment: The simple sowing method of chaos gardening means you don’t need access to many tools to get started.
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Time-Saving: Without the need to consider seed spacing, thinning, or pruning, chaos gardening offers a quick gardening method. Simply sow and let nature do the rest.
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Money-Saving: Chaos gardening allows you to make the most of all your leftover seeds from last season or those nearing their sow-by dates.
Keep Chaos Gardening Within the Garden
Chaos gardening is an inspiring method, and the idea of letting nature grow how she likes may tempt you to take to the streets with seeds in hand and scatter them on bare patches along roadsides. Whilst it is admirable to beautify your local area and encourage more natural scenery where you live, it is important to consider that many varieties of flowers that may be beautiful in a garden setting can actually become weeds if spread throughout the local environment.
For those looking to get involved in beautifying their local area, we highly recommend contacting your local council and getting involved in bushcare or landcare programmes. Through these organised schemes, you can learn more about the species endemic to your area and how to properly support local wildlife, following the principles of chaos gardening in a suitable manner.
Start Chaos Gardening with Mr Fothergill’s
Whether you have a sprawling backyard or a few empty pots, Mr Fothergill’s can help you start your own chaos gardening adventure and bring colour, life, and a touch of wild wonder to your garden. Shop our range of flower seeds and seed mixes, or contact us with any questions on how to let Mother Nature take over your garden.
