“Chaos gardening” is a term made famous by TikTok videos, but the effect has been around as long as seed companies have been offering packets of mixed flower seeds.
The TikTok version has you dump all your leftover seeds into a jar (maybe minus the vegetable seeds) and mix them up, find or make some bare ground and sprinkle the seeds (not on a windy day) and wait to see what sprouts. Here in Cheyenne, you need to add water or the only thing you’ll get are the toughest weeds — and they didn’t come from the jar.
In my experience “wildflower seed mix” is usually native and Eurasian perennial and annual species. The annuals sprout easily and give you flowers the first summer, while the perennials get ready to bloom the second season.
Even our own Laramie County Conservation District offers wildflower mixes. Never having luck with the outdoor seed sprinkling method, I winter sowed them in a milk jug. In the spring, rather than sort out individual plants, I planted tiny clumps of seedlings. Many of their descendants are still around 10 years later.
But even without seed mixes, I have a chaotic garden. Over time, I’ve brought home or grown interesting plants and popped them in wherever I can find space. Sometimes I remove what I have too many of, to make room.
Most of the plants in my chaotic garden come back year after year — if not the same individuals, at least their progeny. They chose locations that suit them, so they almost always do better than where I first plant them. The overall effect, if you choose a variety of flower colors, bloom season and plant height, is much like the scattering of wildflowers in our forests and on our prairies — but growing closer together, since in town we usually irrigate them a bit.
The opposite of chaos (naturalistic gardening), is the formal flower bed full of splashy bedding plants, annuals — begonias, dahlias, petunias, etc., usually laid out in symmetrical designs.
The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens this year has a couple of nice beds by the arched bridge and the entrance to the old greenhouse. You better buy extra of each kind of plant in case any of the matching plants die. And be prepared to entirely replant if it hails. At least prairie-type plants are more hail resistant.
Back in the mid-1900s, some soon-famous British garden designers rebelled and took the old cottage garden (flowers, veggies and herbs mixed together) to new heights — though they did put the tall plants at the back of the very wide beds along walkways and lawn edges. Each species was grown in large clumps.
In 1989, British gardener Mirabel Osler wrote a book, “A Gentle Plea for Chaos,” with the idea, “self-sown plants weaving a tapestry within garden beds …” Since then, there have been other designers who “mimic natural ecosystems while maintaining visual harmony” (Thomas Rainer and Claudia West, “Planting in a Post Wild World”).
When people talk about or show photos of their native, pollinator, meadow-type garden, you can almost always count on seeing purple coneflower, black-eyed Susan and beebalm, because they are the easiest to grow, the most colorful and most bee-attractive. They work well in Cheyenne.
When you design your chaos garden — let’s not waste money on seeds that won’t work — look for a variety of flower colors, plant heights, plant groups (not all daisy types) and season of bloom. If you have some light shade or a wetter area, consider finding suitable plants.
Late summer is a good time for garden planning, and maybe even finding plants and seeds on sale. Here’s a list of my favorite native plants, easily found in nurseries and seed catalogs, in relative seasonal blooming order. Many have related species or horticultural varieties that do fine here. Just steer away from those where the petals have been doubled or tripled because those will be non-pollen- and non-seed-producing.
Columbine, Aquilegia speciesTickseed, Coreopsis speciesBlanketflower, Gaillardia aristataRocky Mountain penstemon, Penstemon strictusPenstemon, any other kindPrairie coneflower, Ratibida columniferaFleabane daisy, Erigeron speciesShowy milkweed, Asclepias speciosaYarrow, Achillea millefoliumBeebalm, Monarda fistulosaPurple coneflower, Echinacea purpureaNarrowleaf coneflower, Echinacea angustifoliaBlack-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirtaNew England Aster, Symphyotrichum speciesGoldenrod, Solidago species
Look for Habitat Hero resources on the Cheyenne Audubon website, especially “Nancy and Barb’s Favorite Wyoming Native Plant List” which lists the attributes of the plants mentioned above, plus others.
And don’t be afraid to add plants you love that are not natives. You’ll find Shasta daisies, perennial bachelor buttons, a couple of rose bushes and some fun plants from Plant Select in my garden. There’s always room to add to the chaos. Just keep a sharp edge around it all so everyone knows it’s intentional chaos.
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