Vegetable garden layout for beginners
Put the vegetable garden in the sunniest spot you have (at least 6 hours of direct sun), close to the house and to water. Start with two to four beds, tall crops on the north side, and paths wide enough to kneel and push a wheelbarrow.
Choose the spot
- Sun first: most vegetables need 6–8 hours of direct sun. Leafy greens and herbs cope with less.
- Close to the kitchen: a garden you walk past every day gets weeded and picked.
- Close to water: carrying cans across the yard gets old by July.
- Away from big trees: roots take water and canopies take light.
Beds, rows or a potager?
Long rows in open ground suit large plots and a rotavator. Raised or edged beds suit most back yards: they warm up earlier, drain better and keep paths clean. A potager, beds arranged around a centre with paths in a cross, looks good enough to sit next to the house. The kitchen garden template is a potager of four beds around a round herb bed.
Arrange crops by height and season
- Tall crops such as beans, tomatoes, corn and sunflowers go on the north side, so they do not shade shorter ones (south side in the southern hemisphere).
- Perennials such as asparagus, rhubarb and berries get their own bed, because they stay for years.
- Herbs go nearest the door, because you pick them in small amounts and often.
- Quick crops such as radishes and lettuce fill gaps between slower ones.
Plan rotation from the start
Growing the same family in the same soil every year builds up pests and diseases. With four beds, a simple rotation works: legumes (peas, beans), then brassicas (cabbage, kale), then roots (carrots, beets, onions), then fruiting crops (tomatoes, squash), moving each group one bed along every year.
Sizes that work
| Part | Size |
|---|---|
| Bed width | 1.2 m (4 ft), or 75 cm (2.5 ft) against a fence |
| Path between beds | 45–60 cm (18 in–2 ft) |
| Main path | 90 cm (3 ft) |
| Compost bins | about 1 × 1 m (3 × 3 ft) each, two side by side |
| Small greenhouse | 2 × 2.5 m (6 × 8 ft) plus 1 m (3 ft) at the door |
More detail on bed sizes is in raised bed size and spacing.
Draw it before you dig
Lay the beds out to scale in Yardplanner, try two or three arrangements, and check that the wheelbarrow route and the compost corner still work. Moving a bed on a plan takes a second; moving one full of soil takes a weekend.