Gardening is hard work, no way around it. With that in the back of your mind, considering a natural garden, a little controlled chaos, may seem like adding more work in the garden. In fact, I’ve found such gardens to be far more forgiving. 

In a tightly structured garden, imagine one with manicured shrubs, every plant is seen and needs to be just right for the garden to be a success. One dead perennial or shrub or a specimen plant struggling along, stands out like grape jelly on a white t-shirt. When you transition your garden to a more natural style with large stands of plants that are meant to touch, intermingle and migrate, a lost plant here or there is rather difficult to spot.

In one respect, tending to a structured garden is easy because you can immediately see what needs to be done. On the flip side, if you don’t tend to that task quite regularly the garden looks unkempt. With a natural, intermingled garden you can be more hands off. If this is a new garden style for you to execute, I recommend planting in large bands of the same plant, such as five rudbeckia maximas, a large stand of echinacea, some blazing stars and hyssops all together. You will recognize your plants as they spread and reseed and know what needs to be pulled, if anything. It will also be easy for you to spy weeds. 

A bit more intense is the wildflower seed garden. This is a completely random garden, cast the seeds and what germinates creates the garden. A bit more knowledge of wildflowers, especially how they look when first emerging, is import so to be able to pull weeds and not young, desirable plants.