Let's Select the Best Location for Your New Garden

Picture a place that’s special to you, a spot you head to take a break, enjoy yourself, discover something new, spend time with people you love, or just reconnect with nature. Now tell me: Did you picture a place nearby, maybe even at home, or did you skip town?

You can create a space that is all these things without heading to a national park or even stepping outside your property line. It could be right outside your back door.

Imagination, meet garden—a retreat and a getaway waiting for you in the backyard, on the porch, or just along the fence, your new escape from reality even when reality is just a few steps away.

In this first part of our "How to Start a Garden" series, you face the challenging task of picking the site for your new garden. Does your unused side yard get enough sunlight for a vegetable garden? Can you squeeze a garden right next to your driveway? Can you even grow anything on a shaded patio?

Choosing the location for your garden is tough for good reason—location means everything.

In some cases, the decision may have already been made for you if you live in an apartment or only have a small patch of ground that gets sunlight because you're in the city. For others, you may have countless spaces where a garden could belong. In both scenarios, there’s more to the decision than you might think.

Even if you're worried you don't have the perfect spot, something will love to grow in the space you have available. I’m going to help you pick the very best location possible for you based on your given circumstances. Let's start by looking at the four key considerations when picking the very best location for your garden.

4 Considerations When Deciding Where to Put a Garden

Picking the best spot for your garden isn’t just a matter of opinion. It’s about balancing priorities and considerations. After designing hundreds of gardens, I’ve created a system that works to help you sort through the different options. You're about to see your outdoor space in a whole new light.

Four key aspects to consider before choosing your garden site:

1. Sunlight exposure
2. Water proximity
3. Convenience
4. Aesthetics

How to Choose the Ideal Garden Location

To use this system, you'll need to gather some supplies. Grab a compass if you have one (or use the Compass app on your phone). You'll also need some graph paper, a measuring tape, and a pen or pencil. It’s time to help you get in touch with your space and pick the best possible location for your kitchen garden. You're going to map out your property (yes, even if you just have a balcony).

Follow these steps to get started.

Step One

Roughly sketch your home and yard to scale on your graph paper.

Step Two

Use a compass to help you determine the cardinal direction of your space. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll want to find South and mark it on your graph paper. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, you’ll want to find North.

Step Three

Mark all the tall structures in your area, including neighboring trees, tall buildings, patios, arbors—anything that is 4 to 5 feet in height or taller.

Step Four

Mark all the spigots, rain barrels, or irrigation hookups in your home or yard with a circle.

Step Five

Mark any pathways or high-traffic areas.

Step Six

Mark any features of your home that would be nice to tie into aesthetically.

Before you consider possible locations for your garden, let's examine the four key considerations further.

How Much Sunlight the Area Receives

As much sunlight on your garden as possible—that’s the goal. Sounds simple, right? But getting hours and hours of light on your garden throughout the year is difficult, especially if you live in the city.

The reason I had you mark any tall structures is because you don't want buildings, fences, and trees standing between your garden space and South, if at all possible. Even a 5-foot-tall privacy fence could block a lot of sun as the sun starts to dip lower in the sky during the winter months.

To avoid these shadows, place your garden on the southern side of your home or other tall structures. (If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, place it on the north side.)

Few of us are lucky enough to live on acres of land free from neighbors, buildings, and trees. Your goal is to have 8 to 10 hours of sunlight a day. If you don't have a good spot that will give your garden at least 6 hours of direct sun, don't stop reading. There are loads of plants that will still grow in just a few hours of sunlight.

Overall, flowers and many fruiting plants like tomatoes and cucumbers need 8 or more hours of sun a day. This is also the case for perennial berries and citrus trees. The plants will likely survive with less light, but you won't get nearly as many—if any at all—flowers and fruits. Beans, peas, and root crops need at least 6 hours per day to be productive. Leafy greens and herbs need just 4 hours a day.

Go back to the map you've been drawing and add a little star next to the places in your yard that receive maximum sunlight throughout the year. Congratulations! You’ve just narrowed your location choices.

Proximity to a Water Source

Consistent water is key to your success if you're setting up a garden that will be growing fruits and vegetables. (Native plant spaces and wildflower gardens shouldn't require much supplemental watering.)

Nature’s water (aka rain) is best but also unpredictable. And most vegetables and fruiting plants thrive with water schedules they can rely upon. For this reason, think about the available water supply before choosing the site for a vegetable or kitchen garden.

If possible, place your garden near a spigot or rain barrel or where it can easily connect to a formal irrigation system. If using a spigot, be certain you can attach either a hose or drip system from the water source to the garden area. If using a rain barrel, ensure that water can run from the barrel to the garden beds. And, finally, if you have a formal irrigation system in place, situate the garden in such a way that the lines can be brought into your garden bed with as little digging and repositioning as necessary.

Convenience

Your garden should be conveniently located if it's something you'll need to tend often. Native plant spaces and wildflower gardens require almost no maintenance whatsoever, so you could place these far from your home. Like your landscaping, these are largely plant-them-and-forget them plants.

Row gardens and vegetable patches growing just one kind of produce also don't require daily tending. You can tuck your row garden out of the way because it’s not something you want or need to look at all the time. Most of the work will be around planting and harvesting time.

A kitchen garden, though, will be growing a number of different types of plants that will be planted, tended, and harvested continuously. It's important that you give accessibility and convenience some serious thought when choosing a location for a kitchen garden. Don't stick your kitchen garden somewhere you can't see if from your house, or it might quickly grow unruly.

If you're starting a kitchen garden, consider the doors you use most to get in and out of your home, the pathways, the driveways, the lawn, everything. In a sense, we want the kitchen garden to get in your way, and we want it to be in the center of the action, so highlight spaces where you and your family spend the most time and make them a priority.

Envision how a kitchen garden could not only fit in your space, but how it could add to them and make your life easier as you head out to grab delicious harvests for your meals. Picture yourself prepping dinner when you think: Fresh chives on top of this soup would be just the thing. How close should the garden be for you to walk out with your scissors?

If you can keep the garden as close to the kitchen as possible, you’ll use it and tend it more frequently. My first successful kitchen garden was right alongside the driveway. As a busy working mom, I was able to check up on the garden just by driving into the garage. Even if I only had a second, I could quickly see if things were wilting, spot holes on the leaves, or note when things were ready to harvest (yay!). I’m fairly certain this proximity to our daily activities made all the difference in my kitchen garden success.

Aesthetics

The goal is for your garden to be beautiful, to feel like it fits in and is part of the existing landscape. With raised beds, this is especially important. We've all seen that one awkward garden box just plopped somewhere random in the yard, right? There are a few things we can do to be sure the garden of our dreams fits in with the aesthetics of our home and the existing landscape.

First, look for natural spots where a garden could fit. Possible spots include a side yard, along a fence, or as an extension of an existing structure, such as a deck or patio. Look for ways to connect your kitchen garden to the rest of the landscape by lining up or being near existing structures or plantings. Head outside with your map and sketch your flower beds, shrubs, trees, etc. Make sure you include any pathways or walkways, as well.

Second, look for areas where your garden could match some measurements of other pieces of your landscape. If the deck is a certain height, design the beds to measure the same. If the building comes out to a certain width, design the beds to come out to that width as well. By selecting existing elements in your landscape to match to the garden, you’ll give your garden a sense of belonging.

I always like to group different elements within the garden. Don't just throw a raised bed out there by itself. If you just want one garden box, add some fruit trees, a birdbath, potted herbs, or something else to group alongside it.

Place a heart on the spaces on your map where a kitchen garden would fit well with the landscape or continue a line or design from your home or other existing structures.

Narrowing It Down

Now it’s time to weigh all four considerations and select the top garden site choices. Keep each aspect in mind, sunlight being most important, water being essential, and then convenience and aesthetics. Choose your top three to four locations (if there are that many possibilities) and number each on the map based on your preferences. Here's an example of what your map might look like.

Now, it’s time to grab a measuring tape and determine how much growing space is available in each area. Measure the width and length of each potential garden space and mark them on your map.

As you select your garden location, the goal is to find a location that matches this blueprint as closely as possible: receives six or more hours of sunlight per day, is near a water source, and is located as close to the kitchen and your everyday activities as possible. You also want a spot that will tie in well to the rest of your landscape and is able to accommodate the size necessary to hold the amount of flowers or produce you’d like to harvest.

The Perfect Location for Your New Garden

I hope you're feeling confident in your selection of the best place to put your garden. I encourage you to make sunlight the deciding factor if you're having trouble prioritizing between a couple of different options. In fact, in my very scientific calculation, 60 percent of your decision should be based on sunlight. Struggling to choose between three or four different options? Lean toward the one that gets the most light. That light will help keep your garden growing its best and looking nice. 

Twenty percent of your decision should be based on water accessibility. It's hard to care for your garden far from a water source. The final twenty percent is split between accessibility and aesthetics. If you have many choices that would accommodate a garden large enough to grow all the plants of your dreams, rank each of them using this formula.

I like to say there's no such thing as the perfect location, but there is the location that's perfect for your future garden. So narrow it down, and then you're ready to think about your garden design in PART 2.

Thanks for being here! We're thrilled to help you start your garden!