If you get flower garden burnout mid-summer, this zen approach to creating a beautiful oasis is for you. Thank you to my good friend Phil Friso-Reinke for sharing photos and inspiration from his personal “chaos garden” with us today. Be sure to check out the playful gardeners’ gift guide I’ve created at the end of the post, too! Zina
The term I use when speaking about my garden is “chaos gardening.” It means just what it says. My garden is chaos. Total chaos. There IS a place for everything but its everywhere.
Each spring I find a ‘hole’ in the garden that needs to be filled. Without remembering what is where, each year I end up with an abundance of beauty that just keeps expanding. This makes gardening fun, carefree and honestly, pretty low maintenance.
I particularly enjoy the perfection of Alliums and they surely satisfy the OCD part of myself that longs for “a place for everything, everything in its place”…
I have over 300 bulbs in 10 different varieties:
Learn which thrive best with minimal care.
… but the rest of my garden is setup much more unconventionally.
Friends and family visit and wonder how my garden can be so perfect and how can I have the time to keep it up, but the last thing I want is for my garden to be a chore, and honestly, I don’t spend very much time maintaining it in the summer.
It’s free to grow, expand and just ‘be’, resulting in an explosion of color and a population boom of some of natures most beautiful creatures. All types of butterflies, hummingbirds, birds and insects migrate to my oasis each year and make it their own home for a few short months.
Then, fall comes and I get to bring the OCD back out of me for cleanup – trimming, cutting and wiping the slate clean for next year’s wonder. The best part is, I never know what the next year will bring, and I welcome the surprise.
Phil Friso-Reinke entered college with the intention of being an accountant, but threw that idea to the wind and left with a degree in graphic design. An experimenter at heart, two of his favorite places to get creative are in the kitchen and garden. Watch out! His one-of-a-kind salted caramel cupcakes are killer.
Playful Gardeners’ Gift Guide
Gift ideas for the creative gardener in your life…
- Spotlights Ultimate Solar Light for Hanging Baskets | Amazon
- Garden Gnomes | Amazon
- Playful Plant Markers | Amazon
- Vertical Garden Planters | Amazon
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Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
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