Planning your garden according to growing zones and exposure

Planification de son jardin selon les zones de culture et l’exposition

A poorly located garden exacts a cost every season. A bed in the shade in July, a square of herbs at the back of the plot that you will never go looking for in slippers, an area where water pools all winter: these are design mistakes, not gardening mistakes, and no technique can fix them afterward.

Planning requires a day of thought and a pencil. It saves three years of trial and error. This guide covers preliminary observation, zoning, exposure, and how to draw a plan that holds up.

Observe before drawing

Ideally, observe a full season. In practice, a few weeks of careful observation are enough to avoid major mistakes—as long as you take notes rather than relying on your memory.

What to record

The path of the sun. Note where the light falls at 9 a.m., 1 p.m., and 5 p.m., and repeat the exercise in two different seasons. In winter, the sun is low: a wall or hedge casts a shadow two to three times longer than in summer. An area in full sun in July may be in complete shade from November to February.
The prevailing wind. In France, it most often comes from the west or northwest. A steady wind dries out the soil faster than a lack of rain and breaks the stems of fruiting vegetables.
Where the water goes. After a heavy downpour, note where it pools and where it disappears within an hour. These two areas will not receive the same crops—or the same bed shape.
Spontaneous plants. Nettle and cleavers: nitrogen-rich soil. Horsetail and creeping buttercup: waterlogged, compacted soil. Plantain: surface compaction. See The different types of soil.
Access points and the water source. Where do you start from? Where is the tap? Where does the wheelbarrow go? These trivial constraints shape the plan more than aesthetics do.

Note everything on a rough plan, even if it is clumsy. An annotated sketch made in October will still be useful in five years; a memory will not.

Zoning: organizing according to how often you pass by

The principle, borrowed from permaculture design, is disarmingly simple and remarkably effective: the more attention a crop requires, the closer it should be to the door.

It is not a matter of comfort but of energy efficiency. A plant you visit every day should be ten steps away; a plant you see three times a year can be at the back of the plot. Reverse the two, and you condemn yourself to abandoning the first.

Zone	Frequency	What goes there
Zone 1	Daily	Herbs, cut-and-come-again lettuce, radishes, edible flowers, everything picked while cooking
Zone 2	Every 2–3 days	Tomatoes, courgettes, beans, carrots, the main vegetable garden
Zone 3	Weekly	Potatoes, trailing squash, green manure, cereals
Zone 4	Seasonal	Orchard, fruit hedge, compost, wood reserve
Zone 5	Almost never	A wild corner — a reservoir of beneficial insects

On a 200 m² plot, the five zones fit within a few metres of one another. On a balcony, the same reasoning still applies: basil on the windowsill, the courgette in the large container at the back. See Balcony vegetable garden.

Zone 5 is not neglect. A pile of dead wood, a few nettles, and an untrimmed hedge provide shelter for hedgehogs, ground beetles, and parasitoid wasps — this is where they recolonise the vegetable garden after every disturbance. A few square metres are enough.

Aspect: which crop belongs where

The general rule can be summed up in one sentence: you eat the leaf → partial shade is tolerated; you eat the fruit → full sun is essential. Fruit requires much more energy to produce than a leaf.

Aspect	Sunlight hours	Suitable crops
Full south	6 hours or more	Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, melons, squash, Mediterranean herbs
East	4–6 hours, in the morning	Lettuce, spinach, radishes, strawberries, peas — morning sun dries the dew and limits disease
West	4–6 hours, in the afternoon	Beans, Swiss chard, cabbages, courgettes — watch out for heat stress in summer
North or shade	Less than 4 hours	Parsley, chives, mint, sorrel, lamb's lettuce, rhubarb, shade-loving berries

Two useful nuances:

Summer shade is a resource, not a drawback. Lettuce in light shade in July is much less likely to bolt. Deliberately planting lettuces at the foot of tomato plants is a good decision, not a compromise.
Distinguish between dry shade and moist shade. Beneath a large tree, shade comes with fierce root competition and dry soil — this is the most difficult situation. Shade from a wall, on the other hand, remains cultivable.

Microclimates: creating and using them

A plot is never uniform, and the differences are greater than you might think — several degrees between two points ten metres apart.

The south-facing wall — it stores heat during the day and releases it at night. This is where you can grow the most tender crops: basil, peppers, and a fig tree in a marginal region.
The hollow and the bottom of the slope — cold, denser air accumulates there at night. These are frost pockets: avoid placing early-flowering fruit trees there, as their blossoms would be scorched on the first clear morning.
The windbreak hedge — an open hedge provides protection for a distance of approximately ten times its height. A solid barrier, on the other hand, creates turbulence behind it and can worsen the problem: this is a common misconception.
Thermal mass — a pond, a water basin, or a large pile of stones moderates temperature fluctuations in its immediate surroundings.

Drawing the plan

Sizing

Beds no more than 1.20 m wide — beyond that, you can no longer reach the center without stepping on it, and compacting the soil ruins all the biological work.
Paths 50 to 60 cm wide — you need to be able to get through with a wheelbarrow. A path that is too narrow will lead to the edges of the beds being trampled.
North-south orientation for the beds, so both sides receive an equal share of sunlight.
Tall plants to the north — staked tomatoes, corn, and sunflowers along the northern edge of the plot, so they do not shade the rest.

Start small

This is the most important piece of advice, and the most frequently ignored. Well-maintained twenty square meters produce more than one hundred square meters overrun with weeds. Expand in the second year, once you know how much time you can realistically devote to it.

Plan the rotation from the outset

Number your beds and note each year what you grew in them. A four-year cycle is enough: leafy vegetables, fruiting vegetables, root vegetables, legumes. The one rule to follow: never grow the same botanical family in the same place two years in a row. See The best vegetable pairings for the kitchen garden.

The most costly design mistakes

Putting the compost at the back of the garden. You won’t go there with your peelings in January, in the rain. Zone 1 or 2, no farther.
Forgetting winter shade. An area assessed in June may be in full shade six months of the year.
Making beds too wide. The irreversible mistake: you’ll eventually step on them.
Neglecting the water source. A thirty-meter hose to unroll every evening, and watering eventually gets skipped.
Planting fruit trees in the hollow. Early flowering plus late frosts: no harvest every other year.
Taking on too much in the first year. The number-one cause of giving up.

Frequently asked questions

How long should you observe before getting started?

A full season is ideal, but few people have that much patience. A reasonable compromise: start on a small area in the first year while observing the rest of the land. You can design the final plan in the second year, with a better understanding of the conditions.

Do you need a scale drawing?

An annotated sketch is more than enough for a family vegetable garden. What matters are the annotations — shade at a certain time, water collecting here, wind from this direction — not the precision of the drawing. Graph paper, one square per square meter, is perfectly sufficient.

How can you adapt zoning to a very small garden?

The zones can be condensed, but the order remains the same: what you harvest daily goes closest to the door, while what you manage once a week goes at the back. Even on 30 m², you can feel the difference after one season.

What should you do with an area where water collects?

Two options: raised-bed gardening, which solves drainage issues, or accept it and plant things that thrive in damp conditions — rhubarb, mint, watercress, willow for mulch. Fighting it head-on costs more than adapting.

Can the plan be changed later?

Annual beds, yes, easily. Permanent elements — trees, hedges, pond, greenhouse — no: these are the ones that need to be positioned most carefully, because they commit you for decades.

Key takeaway

Observe first, draw next, and position things according to how often you pass by rather than aesthetics. Permanent elements deserve careful consideration; annual beds can be adjusted from one year to the next. And start small — it's the only decision you will never regret.

To take things further

Once the plan is in place: our vegetable seeds, our herbs for zone 1, and our bee-friendly plants for the wild zone.