Chaos Gardening Might Be The Easiest Way To Grow Flowers

Chaos often has negative connotations, and the thought of it in your garden may make you picture weeds and brambles overtaking your landscaping. That's not what a chaos garden is, though. Instead, it's simply a way to create wild and whimsical spaces with surprisingly little work. The "trick" to this popular gardening trend is to just scatter a variety of seeds in your garden bed and see what grows and thrives. It can be the perfect strategy for creating casual yet stunning cottage and prairie gardens.

While moving away from formal and carefully structured gardens may seem intimidating at first, it can also be surprisingly freeing. And you'll likely be amazed by how gorgeous your garden turns out to be. There are different levels of chaos you can bring to your garden, too. While you could just scatter seeds from last year's seed packets into your garden bed at random, you could also put together a curated mix of a few seeds that are likely to thrive in your garden's soil and light levels. 

It might be tempting to purchase and use seeds advertised as a "wildflower mix", but unfortunately, these often contain invasive species. So, creating your own custom combination is generally a better strategy for your controlled chaos. Not every plant is going to flourish in a chaos garden, but many will thrive and provide you with a colorful and free-spirited landscape.

The seeds you use and how you prepare your garden bed can make a big difference in the success of your chaos garden. Get a soil test and add compost to increase fertility and drainage if necessary. Go with plants that are a good fit for your space (ideally native species), and forgo seeds that don't do well with direct sowing. You can also opt to scatter shorter-height seeds towards the front of your garden and taller plants towards the back. This will provide just a hint of order in your garden and prevent plants from shading each other out as much.

You'll still need to weed your garden on occasion to remove unwanted and overly aggressive invaders, so it's important to know what you planted and what those species look like at various stages. You don't want to sow a variety of wonderful native plants only to mistake them for invasive weeds and rip them all out. If you fill your chaos garden with colorful flowers that reseed themselves every year, your garden will require even less work the next season since it should replant itself. Some good seeds to consider for mixing into chaos gardens can include cosmos, New England asters, and bee balm. Another beauty to consider adding to your chaotic mix is love-in-a-mist, a fast-growing and self-seeding flower.