Embrace the Chaos

A Chaos Garden is a functional and fun expression of the soil health principle: maximizing diversity!

By Isabelle Jenniches

This spring, I moved to a new place with a large, fenced in but neglected garden area. Residue of kosha and other annual plants that thrive in disturbed soil suggested that former renters had grown vegetables there. One might be tempted to till in order to give the plot a fresh start, but taking the soil health principles to heart, I decided to grow a no-till Chaos Garden instead.

Ancestors of the Chaos Garden

The term chaos garden was first referenced in Gabe Brown’s seminal book Dirt to Soil –One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture, published by Chelsea Green. If you are familiar with companion planting –grouping plants that support each other– a Chaos Garden takes this beneficial practice to a whole new level by combining not just a few but a dozen or more different species. Farmer Brown points out that monocultures do not exist in nature but are an invention of industrialized agriculture.

The concept goes far back. Indigenous peoples in the Americas have inter-planted species that are mutually beneficial for thousands of years. The Milpa is an ancient farming system involving multi-year rotations and growing numerous crops together in the same space in order to maintain soil fertility and biodiversity.

The most well-known example is perhaps the three sisters planting method: corn grows well together with beans that provide extra nitrogen while enjoying the vertical support provided by strong cornstalks. The two tall plants are shading the third sister, squash, which in turn suppresses weeds and preserves soil moisture for all through its sprawling growth habit.

A Chaos Garden, while not as strategically put together, is built on the same foundation of mutual support and cooperation between species.

Establishing a Chaos Garden

My initial goal for the neglected garden plot was modest: grow biomass for sheet mulching in order to build soil. After years of living in the city, I had plenty of old seeds –expired seed packages and heirloom seeds picked up at seed swaps or saved from the last garden I grew years ago and far away. I scattered seeds by hand very generously, raked them in lightly as best I could given the compacted clay soil, and covered the area with some spent hay.

To my surprise, the garden exploded with seedlings popping up everywhere and growing with vigor! Turns out, most of the old seeds were still viable after years in storage (important to keep seeds cool and dry). The sheer density and variety of plants in the Chaos Garden is hard to capture on camera and best experienced as a feast for the senses with its abundance of shapes, colors, smells and even sounds.

Now imagine this wild party mirrored below-ground by an equally diverse and boisterous soil microbiome. There must be roots in every inch of soil, weaving under and around each other, with mycorrhizal fungi creating a web of communication between them and billions of soil organisms delivering nutrients back and forth. As if microbes had been laying in wait for this opportunity, they jumped to life and in no time, the little patch was thriving with minimal care from its human custodian.

Harvesting Abundance

Effortlessly, the Chaos Garden produces food and habitat for many species. The harvest ebbs and flows with peas, leafy greens, purple-top turnips and daikon providing early offerings, followed by squashes and beans and finally sunflowers, corn and melons.

Blue flax and hyssop peek out amidst the greenery—far from getting lost in the chaos they find their niche. Buckwheat grows tall and strong. It’s impossible to harvest the seeds before the birds get to them! Chard, beets and arugula enjoy a bit of shade in the understory.

With summer waning, the Chaos Garden keeps on giving big ears of sweet corn, plump fresh shelling and dry beans, juicy melons and a never ending symphony of flowers. Ladder-backed woodpeckers drum up the stems of top-heavy giant sunflowers while goldfinches flit among Helianthus Annuus and pick aphids off the broccolini.

Resilience in Action

The Chaos Garden exemplifies the soil health principle of maximizing biodiversity and demonstrates its benefits in terms of resilience and plant health. With so many different species in the mix, there will always be some that do well despite challenging weather or soil conditions. Biodiversity above ground is mirrored below, fostering a lively microbial community that can respond to the varied needs of plants. While better soil health aides in preventing disease in the first place, the Chaos Garden attracts above-ground helpers as well.

There were so many insects in this little patch! Most insects are beneficial but I’ll admit, not all of them were welcome. With some trepidation I noticed grasshoppers of all kinds, cucumber beetles and even some dreaded squash bugs. Interestingly though, very little damage was done. The squash bugs, for example, concentrated only at the margins of the field, wreaking havoc among some already struggling winter squash. Meanwhile several eccentric decorative gourds in the center were pest-free, shielded by the surrounding cacophony of plant neighbors.

Scores of beneficials also kept the bad actors in check: all kinds of beetles, lacewings, ladybugs, and spiders hunted in the garden accompanied by native bees and bumble bees, butterflies and moths. One morning, a Praying Mantis showed up and stuck around for several weeks. This fierce predator preys on bugs, flies and aphids.

Having just read Doug Tallamy’s book Nature’s Best Hope, I was overjoyed to see lots of caterpillars as they are the backbone of any ecosystem and an important superfood for baby birds. Hundreds must have been snacked up by the bluebirds and Say’s Phoebes nesting nearby.

Chop and Drop

In chaos gardening, easy rewards outpace labor multiple times, allowing the gardener to observe and enjoy rather than fret and sweat. But there are still things you can do to give the garden some love, especially when the season winds down.

As fruits and vegetables are picked, vines wither and mildew settles on leaves, it’s a good idea to create better airflow by opening up the dense canopy of plants. For this I employ a permaculture method often referred to as “chop and drop”: when pruning, chop stems and leaves up into pieces and let them drop where they fall as mulch. The roots remain in the soil where they slowly decay, creating small channels for water to infiltrate and providing food for soil organisms. A rare exception is when a plant is diseased –in that case don’t use it as mulch but move it to a special compost or the biochar burn pile.

Mulch creates a protective blanket for soil organisms, holding in moisture and reducing evaporation, which can be as much as 90% in the high desert of New Mexico. Decomposing organic material provides a food source for shredders and fungi in the soil food web which then gets turned into soil carbon. Mulch also provides habitat and shelter for pollinators and other insects to overwinter.

Insights from the Chaos Garden

Watering – It can be challenging to water a chaos garden using drip irrigation or a soaker hose as these work best in neat row layouts. Drip lines and hoses only release water within a small radius making it imperative to place them in close proximity to plant roots. I tried to snake my soaker hose through the field but found it necessary to water in between by hand. If you are on an acequia or use surface irrigation, that should work better. The Chaos Garden’s dense plant cover will lessen evaporative water loss.

Stepping stones –It’s part of the fun to be on your hands and knees discovering unexpected delights in the jungle, but some strategically placed stepping stones make this a lot easier.

Plant selection –If turnips are not your favorite vegetable, don’t grow them! Create a Chaos garden with plants you enjoy. You can put together your own seed mix or purchase a ready-made Milpa Mix from GreenCover Seed, for example. Just as in cover-cropping, a Chaos Garden offers the opportunity to address specific needs your soil may have. Choose plants with tap roots (e.g. daikon) to break up hardpan, nitrogen fixers such as beans to boost fertility and include a variety of flowers to attract pollinators throughout the seasons.

Embrace the Chaos –The Chaos Garden’s biggest lesson may be for the gardener to surrender control and instead just set the stage for the creativity, strength, generosity and joy inherent in diversity to shine. You may find yourself surprised and nourished by this first-hand experience of the interconnectedness of life. One short summer in the Chaos Garden is enough to counter the going paradigm of our world being ruled by competition, providing living proof that together we’re stronger. I crouch in the middle of the small, crowded patch and close my eyes to better receive this message delivered by buzzing insects, soft rustling leaves and the gentle warming morning rays of the sun.

Isabelle Jenniches co-founded the New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group in 2018 which led to the successful passage of the state’s Healthy Soil Act in 2019. Drawing from an extensive background in the arts, Isabelle now applies her skills to community organizing through policy, network building, peer-to-peer education and storytelling.

^{All images by Isabelle Jenniches CC BY 2.0}

While this article describes a small-scale garden plot, the benefits of biodiversity also apply to large-scale agriculture as described in this recent article by the Washington Post.