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It’s time to go wild in your garden and embrace the latest trend – chaos gardening. This fun planting technique is random, relaxed and enjoyable, adding a little surprise and delight to your yard.
The idea behind chaos gardening is to scatter a random mix of seeds throughout your garden – whether they are leftovers still in your shed, or a mix of new purchases chosen for their colour and ability to sprout easily. You will not know which seeds will sprout (or where) and you end up with a haphazard, slightly wild planting scheme that can change from season to season, year to year.
Fuss-free and super simple, it provides an element of fun to your garden and is perfect for novices.
This is where the fun is – you don’t have to over-think this style of gardening. Chaos gardening involves a generous scattering of mixed seeds throughout the garden, over-planting if you wish.
Be random in your choice of seeds and relaxed in the way you design your garden. Don’t worry about spacing between seedlings and ignore traditional combinations of flowers and shrubs. Experiment – enjoy the randomness and disorder!
And don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of space – you can create a chaos garden in any sized patch or even a pot or planter if you’re renting.
Chaos gardening is more successful if you avoid planning anything. In fact, half-planned looks more untidy than totally random. This style is all about the comingling of seeds, and a mixture of colours, shapes and sizes.
When choosing seeds, think laterally, including everything from flowers to herbs, annuals to perennials. Favourites include nasturtiums, basil, pansies, cosmos, cornflowers, marigolds, mint, poppies and alyssum. All members of the allium family are also great to throw into the mix – from onions to garlic and leeks, with attractive flowers and useful (and delicious) bulbs.
One way to create a good mix of plants is to empty a variety of seed packets into a bucket and mix before spreading in the soil or scattering randomly.
It might even be fun to include your kids when choosing the seeds – they might enjoy selecting their favourites and find it educational to see which ones take or sprout and eventually flower. Children will also have a great time scattering seeds and get excited when different ones sprout.
This is the best bit – chaos gardening is low maintenance. Because of the multitude of plants, weeds are minimal, and this style of planting lends itself to uneven borders and informal garden beds. You won’t need to trim edges or tidy borders if you are following this concept.
You might even be able to let the flower heads go to seed instead of deadheading them (the process of removing dead flowers from plants that have finished flowering), which is a wonderfully natural way of letting the garden reseed itself. The haphazard style of a chaos garden lends itself to self-seeding and a wilder approach to planting.
It’s a good idea to keep your soil healthy with regular watering and fertilising, but other than that, you don’t need to prepare your garden beds in any special way.
Start with a few seed packets as well as a variety of seedlings for added depth and get planting!
