8 Tips for Garden Planning
/Just when winter is becoming tedious, it’s time to immerse myself in garden planning – thank goodness! Thinking about summer, looking through photos of past growing seasons, and growing plants from tiny seeds are the things that help me get through the snow and ice and mud of February and March (and often April and May, too).
We’re going on ten years of growing food and flowers here. What started as a backyard vegetable garden soon turned into an urban farm, and then into a small flower farm. We now have so much less lawn, and many more shrubs and ground covers and berries and blooming perennials. Years of developing a space feels slow but can produce dramatic change over time.
Ten years of growth: From a vast expanse of lawn to the early vegetable garden to an urban flower farm filled with abundant blooms
Wow. It’s good to remember to look back like this sometimes, because I don’t think even my wildest dreams then would have matched what is reality now.
But on to my tips for garden planning! Whatever amount of space you have, wherever you live, whether you want to grow food or flowers, a little bit of gardening can bring a lot of joy and satisfaction. If you’re not sure where to begin, below are eight tips for getting started.
1. Imagine your summer self.
Picture yourself in midsummer: Are you eating homegrown veggies, growing the biggest pumpkin, watching bees and butterflies, cutting flowers for your kitchen table…?
Let yourself brainstorm and imagine the garden of your dreams. What does it look like? What do you want to grow, and why? Will you share flowers with your neighbors or cook fresh vegetables with your kids? There are no wrong answers here. Figuring out why you want to garden is going to be super helpful for the rest of the process.
2. Be realistic.
An aerial view of our urban farm in spring
Yes, this is where we get back to reality! Now that you know why you want to garden, step back and figure out what makes sense for this season. Do you have space to start plants from seed, or a budget to buy plants and supplies? Do you have travel or other commitments already planned for the summer? Will you have a way to keep your plants watered and tended through the season?
With your dreams in mind, you can start matching the possible with the probable. Maybe that means growing herbs and flowers in a few large pots. Maybe that means building a tiny greenhouse so you can grow the earliest tomatoes in your neighborhood. Again, no wrong answers here! If it fits your dreams and your reality, that’s a great place to start.
3. Map out your space.
Now for some fun! You can use paper and pen, a whiteboard, a computer or whatever method you prefer to map/draw/sketch/diagram your future garden. You can be as precise or as loose as you want. The main goal at this stage is to determine what your garden might look like and how many plants you plan to grow.
A few factors to consider:
Does your garden area have mostly sun or shade (ie, what kinds of plants will grow best)?
Is it often windy (ie, will your plants need support or shelter)?
Will this be a permanent growing area or a seasonal garden (ie, are you planting perennials and shrubs or annual vegetables/herbs/flowers)?
When you get into the nitty gritty, you’ll need to consider things like spacing, plant height, when to seed or transplant, and what plants might grow well together (companion plants). There are lots of ways to mix and match different plants together in a garden.
My favorite tool for mapping everything out is the Garden Planner by GrowVeg.com – it’s an online tool that’s easy, affordable and fun to use. It helps with spacing, quantities, planting dates, companion planting and crop rotation. For a visual person like me who also likes digital records, it’s brilliant. (I’m not getting paid for this endorsement, I just really like this software! And they continue to make updates and add more plants to the database.) We’ve been using it for years, and I love being able to quickly check what I grew in one bed three years ago, or whatever else I think of while planning for the upcoming season.
A section of our urban farm as shown in the Garden Planner
4. Start small.
Especially if you haven’t gardened much before, I recommend starting small. You might have a whole backyard, or a whole acre, that you eventually want to fill with plants, but you can do that gradually.
In the beginning it’s hard to know how many weeds you’ll have, how much watering you’ll need to do, or what unexpected factors may emerge in your new garden. Voles might eat your garlic. Neighborhood cats might scratch up your new seedlings. Deer might nibble on everything. With nature, anything is possible!
I’m really glad I spent a few summers dabbling with a few small garden beds before we went all in. I got to practice, learn the conditions in my space, see what kind of weeds grew, and troubleshoot when both the problems and the solutions weren’t too daunting.
Starting small: we made use of one raised bed and some fencing scraps to grow tomatoes and other veggies, before the yard was fully fenced to keep out deer.
5. Do what works for you.
As we’ve established, I love online tools and software that make the work of planning fun, colorful and easy. It works for me! I like to plan things out to the nth degree and keep digital records of everything, but that’s not essential. If you’re like me and you want some fun online tools, I recommend Airtable, a beefed-up version of a spreadsheet (see below, a Google Sheets screenshot for my vegetable planning and an Airtable screenshot for flowers – and if you use my Airtable invite link, I get a $10 credit toward my subscription). As with the Garden Planner tool, I love being able to make edits easily and save years of data in one place.
However, what works for you might be different. That’s great; do that!
Google sheets is an easy way to track basic info for starting seeds.
Airtable is next-level for spreadsheet lovers.
6. Expect to learn (not fail).
This is a big one. If I took every plant death as a personal failure, I probably wouldn’t want to garden anymore.
Instead, I try to remember that I’m always learning. Every time something “fails,” I try to stay curious, ask questions and do some research. I might try again the next year, with some modifications. Sometimes a plant just doesn’t enjoy the climate, soil type or growing conditions my garden has to offer. Sometimes a plant does great for a while, but then it outgrows the space or just isn’t thriving. Even after a decade growing in one very small and specific location, I’m still learning all the time.
7. Take notes for your future self.
One thing I’ve learned is that my memory isn’t as good as I think it is. Especially when it comes to garden planning season – all those hard lessons of the previous year seem so fuzzy and far away. Without my notes, I would easily make some mistakes over and over and over.
You don’t have to record everything, but I recommend taking note when something goes particularly well or particularly badly. If you plant something wayyy too close together (been there) or wait too long to harvest your corn and it goes starchy (done that) – make a note where you will read it before you do the same thing next year.
Some people use a notebook or a paper calendar, while others (like me) take digital notes. Once again, do what works for you!
8. Enjoy the process.
I’m a flower farmer because I like hard work. Of course I like the pretty flowers, but I also love the process of digging in the dirt, starting plants from seed, trying to identify insects, wondering why something isn’t growing well, looking for the first bud on a plant, and marveling at how much green growth occurs in a few short summer months.
Working in the garden is where I can fully immerse myself in the moment, where I can use my whole body and let my mind wander. If you’re a gardener, chances are you feel this way too. And while it’s easy to feel impatient for winter to end, planning and dreaming is part of the process too. Soon enough we’ll be surrounded by green.
Taking photos and reviewing them is one way I enjoy the process (and the results). Below, a few early summer photos showcase the result of years of hard work and patience (left to right): lush ground cover and shrubs thrive at the entrance to our urban farm; mature peonies and goatsbeard fill a shady corner; elderberries, serviceberries, dogwood and honeysuckle add a layer of privacy between the front and back yards.
