Chaos gardening is the latest trend that has been hitting the gardening world over the past year. Although people have been gardening this way since before 2024, it has become a highly talked about garden method as of late.
What is Chaos Gardening?
Chaos gardening is essentially gardening without following the rules. Instead of reading the seed packet and following the planting instructions, you take seeds and you toss them anywhere and everywhere you want.
It’s survival of the fittest, without worrying about what will grow.
Why are people gardening this way?
There are many reasons why you might want to try chaos gardening. It can be as simple as you don’t have time for a traditional garden, you’re curious and want to experiment, you want a wild looking garden or you love the idea of a surprise garden.
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How to Chaos Garden
The simplest answer to this is to put seeds in your hand and toss them on the soil. In the photo above you can see how we chaos garden with herbs. This garden is actually meant for berries, which at the bottom of the photo has blueberries, and on the far right just out of frame are haskap. In between here we have a mix of perennial and self seeded herbs that have started to take over the garden, that all started from chaos seeding.
Although the entire purpose of chaos gardening is to be chaotic and not follow the rules, there are some best practices for this.
If you are growing veggies with this method, we recommend trying it with plants that grow quickly such as radishes, or with plants that have small seeds like herbs, lettuce, radish, carrots. For best results, larger seeds should be buried and not just tossed on top of the soil.
If you are growing flowers with this method, we recommend growing native, pollinator friendly flowers. Be careful though, as many pollinator blends on the market includes species that can be invasive to your area. So it’s important that you read the flowers that are in the mix and check that they are not invasive to your province or territory before sowing.
Another way to chaos garden is by not pulling out any volunteer plants that are growing from last season (as in the photo below of all my volunteer cosmo plants from last years flowers).
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Benefits of Chaos Gardening
Experimentation
Chaos gardening is a low effort way to get into gardening. By growing a garden like this you can learn about new plants, decide if you enjoy gardening, and see what grows best in your garden.
The picture above was my first ever garden and chaos gardening was how I did it. I got some seed packets of flowers, dug up the lawn and tossed the seeds down. I loved this garden. It looks wild and out of control, but I learned about so many flowers and I would sit on the stairs and watch the bees fly back and forth to the flowers.
Encouraging Biodiversity
Trading out your lawn for a chaos garden means there will be more biodiversity in your yard and garden, which helps support the pollinators in your area.
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Embracing Imperfections
Chaos gardening means that you can enjoying your garden no matter what grows vs trying to control everything. Without worrying about what produces and what doesn’t, you can spend time in the garden soaking in the nature around you.
Additional Benefits
If you grow a garden the traditional way, you may not try certain plants because the rules say that it wouldn’t do well in your yard. But with chaos gardening, you may find some plants grow better in your garden than you expected, allowing you to expand what you grow in future years.
Drawbacks of Chaos Gardening
By now you might think that chaos gardening is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the garden world. However, there are some drawbacks to this method.
The reality is, even though you simply threw seeds on the ground, it doesn’t mean that they will thrive. You still need to ensure your plants receive adequate light, water and nutrients. So although it appears like you throw seeds in the ground and a garden appears out of nowhere, that’s not the case. You will still need to water, weed, prune and thin your plants in order to successfully harvest.
The other thing to recognize is that if you do chaos garden, you will have to expect some things won’t grow well and to just have fun. Some gardening knowledge is required for you to succeed, but if you want to be hands off, than you might get different results than others.
If you want to throw seeds in the ground, and water without any other knowledge or task involved, we recommend chaos gardening with flowers. They are simple to grow, are low effort and provide beautiful results.
Should I Chaos Garden?
This is absolutely up to you and your garden goals! If you want a low maintenance, fun gardening experiment, then it is worth a try. If you do decide to chaos garden, just make sure you still follow the gardening basics of making sure your plants get water, sun and good soil. Have fun and don’t have high expectations. Use the time to experiment and see what does well and what doesn’t.
Enjoy the volunteer plants that nature allowed to live through the winter (but be mindful of volunteer curcubit, due to a rare, but real issue called toxic squash syndrome. If the plant looks weird or tastes bitter, spit it out and throw it away).
And finally, ff you plant flowers, just make sure the seeds are not invasive. Otherwise, enjoy the process!
