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15 Awesome Garden Layouts
What garden layout is best for growing vegetables? How do I plan a garden layout? What grows good together? Choose one of these 15 awesome garden layouts to give you some inspiring ideas.
These are questions we have all asked at some point when planning a garden. What I did was pick a corner of my yard and plot it out on graph paper. We measured, we calculated walking space between beds, we designed these amazing, raised beds from scratch to grow in. All it takes is a little imagination and some creative smarts to get it done.
There is a lot to consider when planning a garden. Things like how much sun do I get? Will it be easy to water in that spot? Is it safe from animals? What is my growing zone?
Garden Design
One of the first things to consider is how you want your garden. Do you need raised beds so it will be easier to harvest? Or can you just grow things in the ground? Would a trellis be beneficial? Do you need to grow in containers?
Another consideration is the amount of space you have. The shape of the space will help determine your arrangement. I had a cube shaped space, so I got creative with beds and their arrangement to maximize growing space.
For a small patio, you might want to consider containers arranged in a raised fashion, like on a ladder or plant stand that gives vertical layers.
There really is no wrong way to grow your own food at home. You just need to plan it all out and get it going.
Garden Bed Size and Spacing
Either beds low to the ground, or raised up for ease of use, you need to consider size. You should never make the bed wider than you can reach to the midpoint. This is so that you can harvest from both sides and be able to reach all of those goodies without getting into the actual bed. For me, being slightly short, a three-foot-wide bed was ample to grow in and still reach the harvest.
Walking spaces between beds should be wide enough for you to carry a bucket or basket and have space to turn around. There should be enough room for you and a partner to work the beds together. About two feet is usually a good width.
Actual Layout Plans
Square Foot Gardening Layout
The square foot gardening layout is great for smalls paces and containers. Basically, you plan the square footage for each plant and arrange it in a grid for best results.
The easy square designing makes it easy to plan and use. It is also versatile from year to year to move crops from one bed to another for crop rotation.
Organic Form Garden Layout
By far the easiest to plan out! You simply go with what nature has provided you with in your yard and plant with the natural flow of the ground. Not so easy if you can’t get to the ground for planting, pruning, and harvesting. Super easy to design though.
I did this one year when I was just starting in a new space, and it was late to get started. It was easy to go and purchase plants and look at my space. I thought to myself, “here, this is where this tomato plant will go” and dug a hole and put it in. No real planning necessary. And THAT GARDEN was one of the best harvests ever.
Vertical Garden Layout
This awesome garden layout increases your growing space when you don’t have enough horizontal space. Works amazing for small yards and patios.
Add depth to that plain fence with hanging baskets and trellises. Grow what you need upwards rather than sprawling out. You can stack containers, or trellis everything from tomatoes to squash and melons and peas and beans.
Don’t let a small ground space deter you, grow up. Up in layers and trellises that is. Easy to maintain for the small space, and great yields too!
Hydroponic Garden Layout
Hydroponics? Really?
Yes! Hydroponic gardens don’t take up a lot of space and they grow small fast veggies great! I’m thinking leafy vegetables here, like delicate lettuce that grows fast.
Hydroponic gardens run continuously, so you can replant with each harvest. Bonus points if you utilize fish for fertilization of your vegetables.
Container Garden
Container gardening is fun and versatile. You can manage smalls paces and still get a bountiful harvest. This is ideal for apartment balconies and small patios. Try combining it with the vertical gardening method to really maximize space.
Traditional Rows
Using traditional rows is an effortless way to lay out a garden. Easy to implement, easy to care for, easy to harvest.
Depending on where you place your garden, it could take up a ton of space. I know if I didn’t have a specific layout, I would just take up the entire yard for a traditional row garden. For me it is best to have defined space, and some fairly rigid boundaries.
Raised Bed Designs
Raised beds are amazing to add some design to your garden. They also save your back from bending to pick your fresh vegetables. Most are made from wood, bricks, or other material. They can vary in height from just a few inches to waist height depending on the design.
I prefer to look at my available space and then custom design my wooden raised beds. This way I can best fit my space and layout much better than prefabricated kits.
The Homestead Garden
This is the ultimate garden that will produce a huge yield. Typically, enough to feed the family for an entire year. Comes complete with crop rotation and planting schedules that alternate through the year.
The homestead garden is typically a traditional row garden but tends to produce for more than just one season. You may incorporate some raised beds and containers in this garden layout.
Pallet Garden Plan
With a little ingenuity, some basic tools, and some discarded pallets you can have an adorable, functional garden. The simplest thing to do is to lay a pallet on the ground and fill the empty middle space with soil. This gives you neat little rows, and a firm surface for vegetables to rest on up off of the dirt.
It’s just as easy to make raised beds from pallets. The easiest way to accomplish this is to cut two pallets in half and secure them into a square shape. Line the inside with plastic sheeting or garden cloth and fill with straw and soil.
Pallets are a cheap source of wood for a variety of projects. Try to avoid the heavily treated woods so you can grow a healthy garden right away. There are many cute designs available to give you some inspiration in your design.
Drought Resistant Garden
Many climates suffer from droughts each season. Drought resistant gardens combine water saving features with drought hardy varieties of plants. It is possible to have a bountiful harvest without using too much water.
Utilize the techniques of water storage, recovery, and drip irrigation to cut down on the amount of water you will be using in your garden. Watering early in the morning and after the sun has set also uses less water and allows it time to soak into the soil spaces to keep plants hydrated throughout the balmy day time temperatures.
Multi-bed Garden
An alternative to the traditional row garden, this one used beds of rows to provide ease of use to the gardener. You have shorter rows and blocks of plants to deal with in a confined space.
This design allows for easy crop rotation, and maximum yield when you tie in companion planting to the bed design. You are able to fit many beds into small spaces for even more versatility.
The Formal Rustic Design
Using a formal design layout, be it beds or rows or raised beds, you can add some whimsy with a rustic flair. Try making garden trellises out of old garden tools. Use cement filled gloves to hold plant labels, or old cowboy boots for flowerpots spread around the garden.
Unused kids’ toys that sit and rust and collect dust in garage corners suddenly become the spotlight in rustic gardens. Imagine those herbs spilling out of a lopsided broken wheelbarrow. Add your own rustic touch to any garden design.
Side Yard Squeeze Garden
What exactly do you do with that narrow space between the house and the fence? Squeeze in a garden of course! It’s not too wide of a space, so narrow beds and vertical trellises along the fence are perfect!
My opinion is that it is better to have a vegetable garden here rather than bushes that may become unruly and choke out the space or grass that constantly needs to be mowed. W vegetable garden here can yield plenty of fresh veggies for a season, and you will clean and re-plant each year to keep the area tidy too.
The Shade Garden
I love sitting under a shade tree relaxing on a spring afternoon. Why not make the space into a garden that you can genuinely enjoy? Create a brick patio with a swing and add some flowerpots of herbs or fruit vines to add depth and variety to the area.
Choose shade-loving plants for under large trees and you can maximize the potential from bare dirt to wonderful garden space.
The Compost Bin Garden
This one is probably one of my favorites! How many times have you composted garden plants to have them spring up unexpectedly in the compost the next season?
It was too much to bother with one year for me, so it became my personal squash patch, and I made a new compost bin. Yes of course, that one did it too in no time! Now I can alternate between compost beds and the plants that grow there are very well fed while the compost is still maturing.
Garden Design is Versatile
Designing your personal garden layout seems daunting at first. All you really need is some measurements of your space and some creativity to plan out where to plant. You can make it as complex with raised beds or as simple as forming some rows and planting seeds as you wish.
No matter how you lay out your first garden, you will become a master gardener in no time. Seeing the fruits of your labors is sure to get you hooked on gardening. Using your first layout will lead you to trying innovative ideas next season.
Tips to Grow on
For some great gardening tips and tricks check out these other articles: