Garden Planning - How I Draw Out My Garden Layout Map

5 Materials
$10
1 Hour
Easy
I LOVE garden planning season! icon

Here's how I plan my garden layout map every year. I do this after I've chosen crops and calculated the right amount of plants for my space ( using the free garden planner printable). Get out your pencil crayons and start mapping!

Tip: Feel free to follow my Garden Planning Pinterest Board icon
Step 1: Gather Supplies


Get out your garden mapping supplies, including your free garden planner, tape measure, ruler, pencil crayons, and pen. Make sure you've completed the earlier steps of garden planning, including choosing your crops.
Step 2: Measure Your Garden


If you don't know the size of your growing space, it's time to go outside and measure your garden. Don't just guess...it's worth the trip outside! Observe what's happening in the garden while you're out there. Are their birds? Still snow? Sunlight? Wind? What areas of the garden are sunny and dry and which are cool and damp?


Consider your scale once you've measured your garden. I like to draw out my garden layout so that each grid box on my garden map represents one square foot of real garden soil. It doesn’t matter what scale you set, it just matters that you use it consistently as you make your map. I'm also a nerd so I like to include a north arrow.
Step 3: Draw Edges of Your Garden


Draw the perimeters of your garden onto your map. Use a pen or dark colour to draw the outside of your garden onto the mapping page (or graph paper). Write the length of each real side beside each side you draw.


At this point, it’s also helpful to draw in environmental factors. This includes common wind directions, rainy or dry areas, the direction of water drainage (lowest area), the pattern of the sun, and any shadows from large structures or trees. These factors will be important as you decide where to site different crops.
Step 4: Draw in Crops!


When drawing in your crops, consider each crop’s specific needs. Consult the seed packets or catalog/website from which you ordered the seeds to get the specific growing condition details.


Some plants such as many salad greens don’t need too much sun and prefer shade during hot afternoons. Other plants like all the sun they can get (as long as they have enough water)!


Use your garden planner to draw in the area for each crop. Use a different colour of pencil crayon for each crop to shade in the area of the garden used for that crop. Record your crop colours in the legend on the map legend section. You can also draw a black dot for each plant if you like (especially for the plants that take up lots of room).
How do you map out your garden? How detailed do you get? Do you make a detailed plan with graph paper and pencil crayons, or do you just go outside with some seed packets and see what happens!? Choose whichever way feels right to you - it's your garden after all icon
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Home for the Harvest | Mary Jane Duford
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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 2 comments
  • Abigail Ellis Abigail Ellis on Mar 27, 2018

    This might be the closest I've ever come to understanding how to to garden  !

    • Yay!!! I'm so glad this was helpful. This article actually receives the most visitors from search of any how-to article I've written...and I just wrote it for one of my friends lol! I guess it is an important garden planning topic?

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