Oh boy, time to figure out another hip “new” gardening style many of us have been practicing for decades before seeing it get renamed and trendy.
It is just another example of online influencers coming up with chic names and recipe-laden memes for age-old gardening practices. First it was square foot gardening, then permaculture followed by lasagna gardening, hügelkultur, and forest gardening, all which in principle are worthwhile concepts with underlying benefits. But it’s like advice on composting with recipes for what to and not to do, when down deep we all know it’s just jazzed-up formalized leaf piles.
Now we’re being tempted with “chaos gardening” which at its core is simply mixing a wide variety of seeds including leftover packets of vegetables and flowers, then scattering them randomly over lightly-prepared soil with minimal planning. The blissful approach easily and quickly creates a surprisingly varied, colorful garden.
It’s a lot like the “cook-up rice” I adopted during a summer in Guyana. About once a week I make a broth with random leftovers in the fridge plus whatever beans I have on hand and mix with rice and spices. Never the same but practical, filling, and usually tasty.
Sounds interesting, and appeals to my free-spirited approach to process-dominant horticulture in general. But I simply can’t embrace this simple planting technique as a practical overall style. Like the alluring idea of a wildflower meadow, it only works for a short time before going to, well…chaos. Hard to have a picturesque wildflower garden without quickly ending up with a dense patch of broomsedge, ragweed, brambles, and other less-satisfying interlopers.
That’s how plant succession works in Mississippi’s mild, wet climate. If you want to maintain a lawn, flowerbed, or vegetable garden, you have to tend it regularly; if you don’t, they quickly become weedy then get overtaken by vines and tree seedlings, then woodland. You have to arrest this succession at whatever stage you want by mowing, weeding, or replanting, which is predictable. Can’t just throw seeds out there and expect it to be all food and butterflies for long.
Not that I don’t already practice the principle here and there myself. I never plant lettuce in rows, which wastes planting space and leaves room for weeds; instead, I mix seed of several different kinds to sow lightly over a prepared bed or in a pot, creating nice little “mesclun” or mixed salad garden. And I have long enjoyed my potager-style cottage gallimaufry of somewhat randomly small both native and non-native shrubs, grasses, perennials and bulbs, vegetables, cutflowers, and herbs for a year-round attractive, pollinator-friendly, pest-resistant garden.
In those areas I take a little break from the usually controlled aspects of planting in strict rows and repeated groups. Though it looks unruly, it is not arbitrary; it is intentionally random, which seems a bit incongruous. I simply co-mingle plants with similar needs for sun and water and can grow together without being bullies. I water as needed, thin crowded plants, and remove rogue plants that can take over or become weedy. And every time I replant, I rework the soil a bit. Hardly haphazard.
My bottom line on chaos gardening: Sprinkling mixed seeds willy-nilly and hoping for the best is easy, carefree and feels liberating, but quickly turns to disarray and dismay; fun intentions aside, chaos is the inevitable result.
Still, there's something real happening: a growing interest in a freer, more intuitive way of planting at least some sections of the garden. And that's worth celebrating, as long as you manage to keep a grip on the more productive methods of “reality gardening.”
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
