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Nature’s Contribution · east of the stile · a windy day

Thrown, not planted

Wide-Spread Chaos Gardens

Food and flowers from seed thrown on a windy day and left to come up how it likes, with a bench in the middle of it.

It is a bright, clear day with a wind blowing across the garden from the left, and everything in it leans the same way: the stems, the flowers on top of them, the grass, and the seed still in the air. There is no cloud anywhere and nothing in a row. Nobody decided where any of it would go: a mix of seed was thrown into the wind, what came up came up where it landed, and what did best this year is what gets thrown again next year.

In the wind

In words: a clear blue sky over a green garden with no paths and no rows. It is crowded with flowers on thin stems of every height, red, orange, yellow, pink, blue, violet and white, daisies, cups, spikes and round heads, smaller towards the back and larger at the front, and every stem and every blade of grass bends to the right, the way the wind is blowing. Little tufts of seed are blowing across the sky in the same direction.

What chaos gardening is

A sustainable landscape specialist at Colorado State University Extension put it this way:

At its core, chaos gardening is the practice of mixing a wide variety of seeds, often including leftover packets, wildflower mixes, or cut flower favorites, and scattering them over a planting area with minimal planning.

She was just as clear about what it is not, and so is this garden. It is somewhere to grow food and flowers with very little fuss, not a nature reserve:

But chaos gardening isn't the same as ecological restoration, pollinator meadow planting or native prairie establishment.

The land next door has a wildlife sanctuary and a wood kept for what lives in it. This is a garden, and it says so.

What is thrown

The mix is half things to eat and half things to look at, and it is checked before it is thrown, because a cheap mix can carry something that will not stay in the garden:

Some wildflower mixes, especially inexpensive or mass-market ones, claim to be native but actually contain non-native species that can spread beyond your garden and become invasive.

To eat

salad leaves, radishes, peas, nasturtiums, kale and dill.

To flower

blanket flower, black-eyed Susans, blue flax, Rocky Mountain bee plant, cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers, California poppies and bachelor's buttons.

Never in the mix

chicory, dame's rocket, oxeye daisy and yellow toadflax, the four noxious weeds J. E. Klett, R. A. Cox, I. Shonle and L. G. Vickerman, “Wildflowers in Colorado”, Colorado State University Extension fact sheet 7.233 says to keep out of a seed mix.

What it gives

Food
Salad leaves, radishes, peas, kale and nasturtiums, whatever came up, to the café in the old dairy and the honesty box on the street.
Flowers
Bunches of whatever is out, for the honesty box, and for anybody who comes to sit in the middle of it.
Seeds
Saved from whatever did best, in packets at the honesty box, and by the handful for anybody who wants to throw some.
Connection
A bench in the middle, no paths you have to keep to, and room for anybody who wants to help throw next year's.

The food goes to the café in the old dairy and to the honesty box on the street, and the manure that feeds it comes from the farm and the sanctuary. The garden’s own panel and battery run the pump on its water butt; the rest of its power comes from the solar farm.

The screen in the seed shed

The seed shed has a screen, with a rack of films under it about chaos gardens, meadows from seed and plants that sow themselves, picked for this room and each checked on its own page to play here. Every film plays where it hangs or goes up on the screen, nothing loads from YouTube until you press play, and every button says how long the film runs before you press it. The titles are the channels’ own, and none of the channels is ours or affiliated with Stimpunks.

The rack: chaos gardens, meadows from seed, and plants that sow themselves

  • What is Chaos Gardening? - Chaos Garden Tour

    The Chaos Gardener - Paint the World with Plants · 31 May 2021 · 12:29

    A chaos gardener on buying untreated seed in bulk and saving your own, then a walk round the garden it made.

  • What is CHAOS Gardening? (Is It for You?)

    Gardener Scott · 28 August 2025 · 13:02

    Gardener Scott mixing old and new seed and sowing it at random, and what to expect.

  • You Should See this Epic CHAOS GARDEN 🌻

    Lohre Farm · 1 September 2022 · 11:30

    A walk through a chaos garden in late summer: corn, peas, squash, kale and dill coming up together.

  • Chaos Garden Update

    Seneca Conservation District · 24 August 2020 · 2:18

    A chaos garden outside a conservation district's office, seven weeks after it was sown.

  • A whole wildflower meadow year in two minutes

    PlantlifeVideo · 22 January 2019 · 2:08

    A year in a wildflower meadow in two minutes, from the conservation charity Plantlife.

  • How to plant a wildflower meadow | RSPB Nature on Your Doorstep

    RSPB · 31 January 2023 · 2:30

    The RSPB on growing a patch of meadow for insects, birds and small animals.

  • Polyculture Plant Density

    RED Gardens · 15 March 2023 · 15:47

    How close to sow when you mix plants together, including broadcasting seed and thinning it.

  • 20+ Self-Seeding Plants That Do All The Work For You

    The Middle-Sized Garden · 8 June 2024 · 12:21

    Plants that seed themselves year after year, and a word about the ones that spread too far.

  • How to Make Seed Balls

    Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center · 16 April 2020 · 3:21

    Making seed balls to throw, from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

  • Growing a Bed of Wildflowers From Seed: 162-day Timelapse

    The Timelapse Team · 8 September 2021 · 5:10

    Two wildflower mixes from sowing to flowering, 162 days in five minutes.

  • Food Gone Wild - Self Seeding / Self Sowing Vegetable Garden Volunteers

    Suburban Stone Age · 29 March 2020 · 5:26

    Vegetables that planted themselves in a garden left to its own devices.

In the garden

Job marker — a seed ball, dropped in the grass

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: What is never in the mix?

Before the code: Colorado State University Extension names four noxious weeds to keep out of a wildflower mix. Name one.

Hint 1

They are on the third label.

Hint 2

One of them is a daisy.

Last hint

One of them is chicory.

Give me the answer

The answer is Chicory, dame's rocket, oxeye daisy or yellow toadflax. Any of the four: chicory, dame's rocket, oxeye daisy and yellow toadflax are on the label that says never in the mix.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: SCATTER

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so — and in the garden, nothing moves even then, wind or no wind.