Sow a little chaos in your life
It has always been my belief that every garden benefits from areas of creative chaos. Not weedy, out-of-control chaos, but just enough to link the experience of the garden to our pleasure in natural landscapes. My own garden includes selfsown flowers, both native and otherwise, that bloom in an informal profusion. “Cultivating Chaos: How to Enrich Landscapes with Self-Seeding Plants” by Jonas Reif, Christian Kress and Jurgen Becker ($40; Timber Press), is a handsome and informative guide to this sort of gardening.
The authors advise that the trick to creating a pleasing garden design with self-seeding flowers is to contrast their relative chaos with “clearly defined architectural forms and areas of quiet that are the result of traditional garden planning.” Photos by Jurgen Becker show examples of how nicely this can work. They show both wider landscapes and closer views within the self-sown beds. There is plenty of instruction for working with plants that reseed. The authors say to: keep a balance between larger, more dramatic plants and those that are smaller and wispier; decide which plants or flower colors to let in; edit seedlings; and use reseeding plants between pavers or on vertical surfaces like stone walls.
While the authors and plantings shown are European, the principles are universal. Most of the plants suggested can be grown here, or the plantings can be redesigned to include our less hardy or native plants. The resource section lists several eastern U.S. gardens that include self-sown areas. One is the High Line, a new urban park in Manhattan that has been created on an abandoned elevated rail line, which I agree is a fine source of inspiration. I suggest the Native Plant Meadow of the San Francisco Botanical Garden and the wall plantings in the lower garden at the University of California Blake Garden in Kensington (www.blakegarden.ced.berkeley.edu).
The book lists three Northern California resources: Annie’s Annuals for annuals and perennials (www.anniesannuals.com); Digging Dog Nursery for mostly perennials (www.diggingdog.com); and Greenlee Nursery for grasses (www.greenleenursery.com).