Garden Aspect can make the difference between a good result and an ordinary one

Garden aspect isn't that hard to work out, put simply - Where is the sky? Vegetables need a lot of sun and a fair amount of water so you are looking for a garden aspect that faces the sun. There should be no shading trees or structures above, but equally there should be no solid walls behind. A brick or stone wall can absorb a lot of heat from the sun. While this can be useful for something, you don't want your veggies to cook before harvest.

Shading is very important and even a spot that faces a good direction and seems OK can get a significant amount of shade during the day. This makes it important to watch how the light and shade moves throughout the day. The video below will show you what I mean.

Have you found a good spot? If you have that's great. If not, or you are not sure, don't worry, there are plenty of other places to start. If you need an alternative starting point why not try container gardening? Garden aspect is easier to deal with when using containers.

On the other hand, if you have a suitable area for a vegetable garden, you should start to think about its shape and orientation.

Basically, if you live in a temperate zone (most of Europe and the USA, Souther Australia or Southern Africa, etc.) then you will need to orient your planting rows in a North-South direction to make the most of a good garden aspect.

In tropical and sub-tropical areas you may find an East-West orientation can work as well (although taller crops like Sweet Corn, may still do better with a North-South orientation).

The practical upshot is that non-rectangular areas can be a bit tricky to work with (try sub-dividing them into two or more smaller areas that are squares, rectangles, or at least trapezoidal). You can get more information about this when you are ready to look at the vegetable garden layout.

The only other thing to think about here is the area surrounding the vegetable garden. Try not to go too close to fences, trees, garden features, or structures. There are many reasons for this. For instance, a tree that is too close will soak up water and nutrients faster than you can apply them. There are few things that can restrict your productive output more than tree roots!

However, as is often the case in life, one simple thing can over-ride all other considerations. In this case it is the simple practicality of garden maintenance. You should leave about 2 "lawn-mower-widths" between the vegetable garden and anything else (3 would be better).

There will always be some "domestic politics" to consider. You may love growing a food garden, but your 'better half' may see it as just too untidy. So don't make things worse by creating spaces that are too narrow for you to easily trim edges and mow.

In my case, I tend to find myself facing "the Look" whenever I come inside after a spot of weeding. You see my habit is to simply toss the weeds out of the vegetable garden and onto the lawn.

"I hope you're not going to just leave it like that!" is the greeting I often get. But because I have enough space around the garden, the problem is easily fixed by running around with the lawn mower. "Oh you've got no idea how much tidier that looks!" (Actually - I do).

OK, so you have worked out where to put a vegetable garden so it has a good garden aspect. You can orient your planting rows properly and you are ready to start building the vegetable garden. While we have the concept of tidiness in mind - what about the edges. what is the best way to divide the vegetable garden off from the surrounding garden?

Of course, there are many ways to do this, but the one I like is a raised vegetable garden.

Garden aspect is, of course, only one part of the garden planning process, below are some useful links for additional reading, but you can also subscribe to our Free email newsletter - The Food Gardener.

Further reading and useful links

Working out the area of your vegetable garden.
This can be a bit tricky if you have an irregular shaped area to work with, but these notes should help.

Organic vegetable gardening
There is more to organics than just avoiding the use of chemicals. Here is some information to help you get your head around it.

garden ecology
An ecological approach to gardening begins by looking at the various aspects of the physical environment. Garden Aspect is just one of these.