The Chaos Garden: A Guide

How to accidentally create one of the highlights of your year in 16 easy steps!

1. Start with an eyesore—a part of your yard you have no idea how to manage. Something like a planter on the far side of your driveway filled with nothing but dated red lava landscape rocks and an out of place palm tree. You have big ideas for this spot, but you rent your home, so acting on those big ideas is not feasible.

2. Spend literal years complaining to your husband about this spot. Why does it exist? Were red lava rocks ever an “in” landscaping trend? Who on earth thought planting a random, singular palm tree was a good idea? What can you even grow in a spot that gets so much unrelenting sunlight? 

3. Toss a half used packet of California poppy seeds onto the rocks one day. 

4. Promptly forget about said seeds. 

5. Watch in amazement as those few tiny seeds flourish, leading to a vibrant poppy patch every March.

6. The poppies wither away each summer, returning the planter to its previous barren state. Wonder if it’s possible to cultivate beauty in other seasons. 

7. Wait until this year's poppies die, then try an experiment using a reel you saw on Instagram about “chaos gardening” as inspiration. Fill a bucket with dirt and summer flower seeds that love full sun—zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers—then scatter the seed filled dirt across the lava rocks. 

8. Water daily, preferably in the evenings when the harsh sunlight has faded to cotton candy streaks of pink and purple across the sky and the heat starts to dissipate. This will become your favorite part of the process. 

9. Savor your evening watering rhythm, often the most peaceful part of your day. Practice breathwork, send a voice message to a friend, pray. 

10. Document liberally, and with great glee, when the tiny sprouts start to make their way through the rocks. 

11. Bonus: thanks to all your watering, the poppies come back! 

12. Barely contain your excitement as the planter bursts to life—delicate cosmos in fiery oranges and deep pinks, fluffy zinnias in bright colors that span the rainbow, and a single sunflower stalk reaching toward the light. 

13. Open the garage door every morning and send your kids scampering onto the driveway for a sunflower status check. This becomes another favorite part of the process—there are few things cuter than a chorus of “it’s as tall as me now!” shrieks. 

14. Marvel at the community this chaotic little garden elicits as it grows. Take in the compliments from people on their morning walks, receive gardening tips from a neighbor, and make bouquets to leave on friends' porches. 

15. Toward the end of the summer let the flowers, the zinnias specifically, dry out so you can harvest the seeds—the potential for so much future joy. Plan to save some for yourself, and have fun dreaming of who else you can share them with. There’s the sweet older woman across the street, a dear long-distance friend, another friend about to celebrate a birthday, and many others who love to garden. Notice the chaos garden’s ability to share its wealth, to continue to cultivate community even when it is no longer thriving.

16. In November, it’s time to cut the garden back. What once was vivid is now old; growth has turned into dull lifelessness. A metaphor, you think. But, you also think about the ability you have to bring the garden back, to try again next year, to once again attempt to share beauty and peace with a world that so often tries to stomp it out. This is your small, gentle act of defiance.