I was delighted when I discovered that ants can spread seeds all over the garden, simply by carrying them about (and, fortunately, then dropping them).

For me, the idea of self-seeding plants, within limits, is great. They save both money and time, and my forget-me-nots, Californian Poppies (both yellow and orange), Aquilegia and foxgloves all pop up in unexpected places. And, where they grow is obviously where they like to grow. So, I don’t need to decide for them or make the inevitable mistakes involved in positioning plants.

In fact, the first ever plants I grew from (a packet of) seeds were some British Tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum, a species of St John’s wort). They are not the most beautiful plants (they do look great with Heart’s Tongue ferns in chalk forests), but they self-seed profusely in my garden and who am I to dig them up? They are my babies and always will be.

Cultivating Chaos is a book one you can sit down and read from cover to cover (I did). It explains that, as any gardener will know, naturalistic gardens have immense charm. However, without the gardener’s intervention, they can rapidly become overwhelmed. Therefore, this guide provides strategies when using self-seeding plants, and provides necessary the information about, and extensive lists of, many of the plants that you might wish to use. The strategies include controlling self-seeding plants, getting rid of unwanted plants, framing the planting (after the ‘Dutch Wave’ gardeners), using crevices, joints and crushed limestone in clever ways, creating wildflower meadows (which can be using self-seeding plants on the largest scale), and managing the mix of plants.

Of course, as any gardener knows, a garden is never finished – it is not like a painting as, necessarily it evolves through time, through the season and through one’s own life. Therefore, using self-seeding plants, is inevitably a decision to see what happens and an acknowledgement that one year’s pattern in your garden will never been repeated. Altogether, this is an excellent book to sit down and read, as well as to use as a reference.

The authors live across Germany and Austria, and have extensive experience in gardening, writing and photography.

Cultivating Chaos: How to enrich landscapes with self-seeding plants, by Jonas Reif, Christian Kress and Jürgen Becker, Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 189 pages (Hardback), ASIN: B01FGOH7NC