The Chaoss Garden
11 November 2025
If the Paddock Garden is all about rhythm, rows, and predictability, then the Chaoss Garden is its mirror image — wild, experimental, and full of life that refuses to fit into a plan.
This patch sits out at the Schutts driveway, where we decided to hand more control back to nature and just see what happens when soil, seed, and biology get to write the recipe themselves.
We’ve called it the Chaoss Garden — a mix of chaos and soil.
🌱 A Living Seed Mix
The ground will be sprayed out with a light rate of glyphosate, fish fertiliser and Fulvic acid (Fulvic acid increases cell wall permeability by 30% reducing the amount of spray required, fish fert keeps the soil biology fed so that they can eat and digest the low rate of glyphosate). This wont be cultivated, just Direct drilled. The residue from the previous season stayed on top as armour, and the diversity went straight in underneath.
The seed blend includes everything from carrots, beetroot, and leeks to peas, broccoli, pak choi, sunflowers, lupins, vetch, yarrow, and marigold — plus a dash of wildflowers to feed the pollinators.
We also treated the vegetable seed with Trichoderma, a beneficial fungus that protects roots from disease and helps the young plants build stronger relationships with soil microbes from day one.
Some plants will thrive, some will struggle, and some will show up in places we never expected. That’s part of the magic.
This garden isn’t about control — it’s about creating conditions for life to organise itself.
🐔 The Chicken Loop
To close the loop, we’ve added a mobile chicken hutch that will eventually move through the Chaoss Garden once the first crops have finished. Inside are fourteen Chickens — a mix of Orpingtons and Sussex, both dual-purpose breeds.
They weren’t hatched here on the farm (our own hatch didn’t work out this time), but they’ve settled in well. We’re not entirely sure yet who’s a hen and who’s a rooster — that part will sort itself out too. Thats the beauty of the duel purpose breed, we will eat any surplus.
By the time the garden is in its peak, they’ll be nearing maturity. The plan is simple: they’ll help tidy up what we don’t harvest, eating the leftovers and turning it into fertility. If the balance swings our way and we end up with enough hens, they’ll start laying right as the garden hits its stride — fresh eggs for the boys to collect and sell.
It’s another layer of life in the system — a cycle of food, fertility, and fun that builds more than it takes.
🌾 Life in Motion
There’s no blueprint here. The Chaoss Garden shifts daily — new seedlings appearing, others fading, bees and butterflies finding their rhythm, and soon, chooks wandering through the mix.
It’s a full ecosystem, not a crop. The plants feed the soil. The soil feeds the microbes. The microbes feed the next flush of growth.
It’s messy, it’s unpredictable, and it’s exactly how it should be.
🌿 What It Teaches Us
The Chaoss Garden is our reminder that regeneration isn’t always about control — sometimes it’s about trust.
Trust that seeds know how to grow.
That roots will find their own balance.
That animals can become part of the solution instead of a problem.
That the land remembers what to do if we give it the chance.
Every day out here looks different, and that’s the point. It’s not a linear system — it’s a living one. And as we keep learning, that’s where the resilience comes from.
Imagine how much extra food we could grow for our whānau and community if every farm using multi-species crops tucked a few edibles into their mix.
A handful of seed, a shift in thinking — and suddenly every paddock becomes part of our local food system.
