Lloyd is one of the many TikTok creators who collected a bounty of vegetables and herbs after the growing season from their chaos gardens. In a viral snippet, Lloyd showed her lush garden of veggies that she allowed to grow wild, and had some of the best quality vegetables she had ever grown. She narrated how she came to follow the viral gardening hack. “I started chaos gardening when I was working a full-time job with a one-hour commute each way. I had absolutely no time to garden, but I still wanted to grow my own food,” she penned in the caption.
Similarly, creator and gardening enthusiast, Taylor (@tayyluh) flaunted her beautiful garden full of colorful blooms from native wild plants in a viral TikTok post with 19,000 likes. She claimed chaos gardening was ideal for anyone with a Type B personality wishing to plant a flower garden. “The results from last year’s chaos garden were unmatched,” Taylor captioned. People were impressed with her garden. A viewer, @busters_mama, said, “This is a lovely chaos garden. All the flowers are light and lithe.” “Honestly, it’s giving Secret Garden vibes, and I love it. So pretty!” shared @lauren_892.
Chaos gardens echo nature and create an ecosystem for plants and wildlife, providing them with food and shelter. The free-spirited method of gardening rejects any traditional rules of spacing or timing and celebrates spontaneity and biodiversity, per Popular Science. It typically involves scattering a blend of seeds without a proper design for the garden beds or plants, and allowing natural selection processes to let them thrive. “It is a fun way to express yourself by embracing the beauty of randomness and the joy of seeing the unexpected unfold,” said Russell Taylor, Vice President of Live Earth Products Inc. in Utah, per Bob Vila.
Sally McCabe, associate director of community education at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, said, “Gardening is all about control—control the weeds, control the soil. Control what we grow, where we grow it, how we grow it, when we plant it," she adds. "Every once in a while, it's nice to take a break from all of that,” per Martha Stewart. Epic Gardening shared their take on chaos gardening methods on YouTube.
You can follow @meggrowsplants and @tayyluh on TikTok for more videos.
