Gardening trends come and go all the time. No-till gardening, micro-gardening, permaculture, square-foot gardening, and a host of other trends burst on the scene each year. Some have staying power, others don’t.
The staying power of one of the newest trends, chaos gardening, remains to be seen. It’s an interesting and fun way for busy people to jump into gardening in a low-pressure way.
Are you curious about the latest gardening trend? Let’s take a look at this method to help you decide whether it works for you.
What is Chaos Gardening?
Chaos gardening is what it sounds like – a carefree, free-form approach to gardening. In chaos gardening, gardeners lay aside rules, structure, and traditional advice and simply let nature take its course with your garden.
Traditional gardeners spend tons of time prepping the soil, planting, weeding, and tending the garden. Chaos gardeners, on the other hand, simply grab a handful of different seeds and scatter them around the garden. Whatever germinates will grow where it falls.
The goal is to have a natural-looking garden that is full, lush, and thriving without putting in a lot of time or effort. Instead of rows of organized plants, you’ll have a random scattering of them.
Chaos gardeners claim that this method works equally well with fruit, vegetables, flowers, herbs, and grasses.
Some chaos gardeners let the unruliness spread throughout their yard, turning the whole space into an unpredictable garden. Others turn one or two raised beds over to chaos, and continue to garden traditionally in other areas of their yard.
A lot of people use this method as a way to use up leftover seeds.
Where Did Chaos Gardening Come From?
While chaos gardening has been embraced by some professional and serious gardeners, it’s primarily a social media trend. This new mode of growing plants has gone viral on TikTok.
Unfortunately, like so many social media trends, this means potential chaos gardeners see only a few well-cropped and carefully filtered images and videos.
Instead of getting the full picture of the positive and negative aspects of this new gardening method, they see curated images of “chaos gardens” that look perfect and healthy with little work.
Because it’s a social media gardening trend, instead of something with traditions or research to back it up, tread carefully. Remember that many of the people praising chaos gardening haven’t looked at it as a whole. They’re only interested in their own small plot.
Since gaining popularity online, chaos gardening has taken root in far-reaching areas. Garden shows, professional gardeners, and landscapers are jumping on the chaos gardening train and having great results.
If you’re interested in chaos gardening, check out advice from people in your area of the country, and prioritize advice from articles, books, and experts over that of social media influencers.
Laissez-Faire Gardening Perks
On TikTok, chaos gardening advocates emphasize the perks of taking a more casual approach to gardening. They make some good points. Gardening can become stressful, frustrating, and rule-based. There’s nothing wrong with trying something new.
With a variety of “perfect” ways to produce an abundance of vegetables and flowers in your garden, it can feel overwhelming even to get started. Chaos gardening can take the stress out. When you’re just starting out, it seems so much easier just to let nature take over.
Chaos gardening can reduce start-up stress and can create a delightful, natural-looking garden full of surprising little plots of carrots, daisies, or other common plants popping up among unexpected companions.
If you love the look of the “rewilding” trend, chaos gardening is a great way to create something similar.
Chaos gardening is more structured and focused than rewilding—it’s more like a garden and less like an abandoned pasture. For many people, the goal of chaos gardening is to create a yard that looks like a magical cottage garden in a fairytale.
Many chaos gardeners say that this new way of growing things can put the fun back into gardening. The rules go out the window, the work of gardening is significantly reduced, and – in theory – the garden thrives.
Chaos gardening can be incredibly budget-friendly, too. You get a chance to use up all your old seeds and just see what happens with old seeds.
Chaos Gardening Drawbacks
It’s not all fun with violets and lilies in the chaos garden. The truth is, many of the “rules” of traditional gardening exist for a reason.
If you decide to practice chaos gardening, you’ll have to accept that some plants will simply not thrive (or even grow at all) without some care from you.
If you scatter seeds carelessly in the garden, you may get an abundance of kale and no beets at all. You may get weeds and nothing else. You may see sweet Annie seedlings spring up and get choked out by bishop’s weed.
At some point in your chaos gardening, you may have to decide to drop some of the chaos to keep the garden.
When you’re chaos gardening, and just scattering seeds across the yard, you’ll end up with some plants growing right on top of each other. Sometimes, you’ll have to choose one or the other.
You’ll also have to keep an eye out for black rot and other diseases that come from growing plants too closely together.
In a chaos garden, you’ll also have to be patient. This method is all about the wait and see approach. You may throw in two whole packets of carrots and end up with none. You have less control over the end result in a chaos garden—that is part of the point.
6 Points to Consider
Even in chaos gardening, it’s important to do a bit of prep work to have a thriving garden. If you simply throw seeds onto mud, you’ll end up disappointed. So prepare your space before casting your seeds onto the soil.
1. Soil Quality Matters
Before scattering seeds haphazardly, spend some focused time building up the soil. Most seedlings will need a rich, well-draining soil. Add plenty of organic material and manure. Make sure your soil drains well and is loose, rich, and not too rocky.
If your dirt is lacking, bring in some garden soil and bone meal along with the manure. Mix everything really well. Ideally, sift your soil through a wide-mesh screen to loosen it even more. This screen from Achla Designs at Amazon is the perfect size and has handles.
2. Location
Obviously, the best place for a chaos garden is a bright, sunny area with plenty of air movement. If your garden is in partial shade or shade, you have to take that into account. A sunny chaos garden will be much more successful than a shady one.
But location can also be understood in the broader sense. Some areas of the country are simply better for chaos gardening than others. Here in New England, rocks and weeds are a huge part of our gardening.
If you don’t actively resist the weeds, they will take over. In other areas of the country, heat and drought may require more effort from you than the chaos gardeners online indicate. Few veggies are going to thrive during the summer in a hot, arid climate.
Think seriously about where you live and how much sunlight your garden will get. Pick the best, sunniest spot in your yard for your chaos garden.
At this point, you’ll also have to decide just how much space to give your chaotic garden. Will it run wild across the whole yard, or will you confine it to a small part of the yard?
3. Local Regulations
Not every neighborhood welcomes the chaos of growing things in the front yard in an erratic way. If you live somewhere with an HOA, you’ll have to be particularly careful about what, how, and where you create a chaos garden.
Check out your local gardening regulations before planting—you may have to stick to a chaos flower garden or confine your chaos garden to a few beds.
4. Compatible Plants
Not all plants thrive together. Whether you’re creating a few chaotic containers or a yard-sized garden, read up on companion planting first. Try to cluster compatible seeds together in area, or just avoid tossing seeds that don’t play well with others into the mix.
Rye grasses and garlic mustard can make it impossible for other plants to grow near them. Broccoli tends to suppress other brassicas. Brassicas, in general, inhibit the growth of nightshade plants. Fennel suppresses the growth of other plants, as well.
No matter how chaotic you want your garden to be, a little bit of planning can prevent a barren patch of earth with one lone fennel plant in the center.
Learn more about companion planting in our guide.
5. Watering Still Matters
Even if you are hoping to be as careless as possible in your gardening, watering is important. In the first few weeks after planting, don’t let your soil dry out. Give your seeds a good water semi-regularly.
Don’t let your garden dry out, or your seeds will not sprout. In a dry season, take care to continue regular watering. Even the wildest garden space needs a little TLC to truly thrive.
6. Don’t Rely on Chaos Gardening for Food or Income
Chaos gardening works best as an addition to your primary food garden if you grow your own food. You just can’t leave things up to chance if your dinner depends on what is thriving in your garden.
This method is best used as a fun addition to your garden but not as a method for producing food or income. But it’s perfect if you want to use up some extra seeds that you have no specific use for.
