This area is my second hot mess, with the Oak garden being the first. This is what the area looked like when we first moved here in the summer of 2019.
Yup, all wooded area. In 2021, I had this labeled in my garden picture folders as the North garden since this is on the north side of our house. At the time, I was thinking about planting a small little flower bed right there close to our workshop. But it wasn’t a priority because I was working on getting other areas established.
In September 2022, we had another tree-removal done and cleared out trees around the workshop to make the area cleaner with less leaves falling on the workshop roof (and our house roof). What you see in the picture below (around the workshop) is actually not the designated ‘Chaos Garden.’ I just wanted to show you the area in general.
I don’t have any pictures from 2023 because the whole area around the workshop grew up with weeds – lots of viney weeds. The boyfriend decided to spend half a day weed-eating the area and ended up with poison ivy on this arms and part of his face. Earlier this year, we decided to work on getting the area cleaned up so I could just mow it. There are a LOT of rocks (and Lord knows what else) in the area around the workshop, so we spent two days tossing big rocks into the wooded area. I am able to mow most of it now, but there are still a few areas we need to clean up.
This picture is from July of this year.
The area I am focusing on for the Chaos garden is in this general area.
I picked this area for the chaos garden for a few reasons. Back in July when I was out walking one of our indoor cats on a leash, I spotted flowers that looked like mountain mint. You can also see in this picture how ‘chaotic’ the area has grown, taken 3 weeks after the picture above.
I finally cleared a small path to the mountain mint, and it is indeed mountain mint! At this point, I’m not sure if it’s hoary mountain mint or southern mountain mint.
To start a garden area here without lots of prep to get rid of a lot of stuff already growing here is part of what contributes to the name of the garden. But I wanted a place in full sun where I could plant some of my bigger items because I don’t really have anywhere else in my gardening areas to plant things like that.
I’ve used my PictureThis plant ID app, and this is what I’m dealing with in the area so far: daisy fleabane, summer grapevines (going up the tree behind the mountain mint circled above), muscadine vines, hairy clustervine, poison ivy, a sand hickory tree, eyebane, hairy wood-rush, fall panicgrass, fewanther obscuregrass, and lots of briars – just to name a few. I don’t know if the plant ID app is accurate with some of the grasses.
At the end of September, I cleared a bigger path as a starting point. Let’s add ragweed to the list of weeds above because this area was FULL of it! I’m glad I’m not allergic to it.
On October 30th, I cleared the left side of this pathway as my starting point for planting. I had purchased quite a few plants on sale online a couple months prior, and they really needed to go in the ground.
Another thing contributing to the name of the garden is my planting style. I would normally chart out where to plant what in my garden beds, based on height, spacing, flower color, etc. I am just planting things wherever in the Chaos garden. No planning – just putting stuff wherever. I have collected a bunch of seeds from my plants that happily resow themselves everywhere each year, and I am going to sprinkle those throughout the right side of the pathway next spring when I have that area cleared up more. Those seeds include wishbone plants, celosia, portulaca, and annual salvia (hummingbird sage).
So the first plants went into the Chaos garden on October 31, 2024.
- Eucalyptus – Baby Blue Bouquet
- Bluebeard – Empire Blue
- Baptisia – Vanilla Cream
- Salvia azurea – Blue Sage (I’m not sure if this one is still alive though.)
- Scotch Broom – Sister Rosie
- Verbena bonariensis (2 that I started from seed late this summer)
- Rudbeckia – Showy Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida var. speciosa)
- Joe Pye Weed – Baby Joe
- Artemisia – Silver King
- Russian Sage – Sage Advice
- Bee Balm – Pink Frosting
Also in the area above the thick tree log (above plant #9), there are the following naturally growing that I will keep.
- American Beautyberry
- Hoary (or Southern) Mountain Mint
- Tall Goldenrod
Mid-November, and everything is still alive and hopefully getting established before our first frost, which is more than likely going to be this week. It doesn’t look like much now. We’ll see next spring if I planted too late this year. I put the plant tags/markers by each thing I planted so I’d know if it comes back in springtime.
