Design garden vs. chaotic beauty revisited

After my last post of “rampant growth of celosia: design garden vs. chaotic beauty”, one friend said he prefers chaotic beauty to design garden as the latter is “too neat, orderly like military parade.”  He must be in the camp of Emily Dickinson whose aim of a garden is “rich confusion” and “no stiffness, no ceremony”.

Martha Dickinson (Emily's niece) remembered her aunt's garden “rich confusion was its aim. . . . you want to come upon mignonette in unexpected places, and to find sprays of heliotrope in close consultation with roses . . . No stiffness, no ceremony. . . This kind of garden--asparagus waving near phlox, roses entangled with peonies.”

A chaotic garden extrudes the beauty through its unrestrained, undisciplined and natural flourishing and exuberance.

However, we have been conditioned to perceive a beautiful garden is a neat one, vibrant and vivacious though it may be.  These photos show our attempt to make a “chaotic garden” into a semi-design one, a compromise, so to speak.  These celosias are all volunteer come-backs, but I did move them around.

Many of our founding fathers are gardeners; we always stride to make a patriotic garden, even a symbolic one.