How to Plan Your Perfect Garden in 2024

Planning makes perfect! Whether you’re hoping to start your first garden or tweak an existing one, taking the time to properly plan it out will pay tasty dividends later on.

Ben gets our creative juices flowing with a back-to-basics look at vegetable garden planning, including practical considerations behind positioning a new garden, and how and where to locate crops within it. Get your garden off to a flying start this growing season!

Want to set up raised beds like Ben’s. Check out this video:

Planning a bigger plot? You might find this video helpful:

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A new growing season is around  the corner and with it the   promise of a delicious and productive garden. Whether you’re hoping to plan your very  first garden or tweak an existing one,   taking the time to properly plan it out  now will pay tasty dividends later on.

So let’s get those creative  juices flowing and work out   what will go where, so we’re ready for spring! Today I’m going to be planning  four raised beds and I’m going to   be showing you the process I use  to get the very most from them. All the vegetables chosen  are easy to grow, reliable,  

And well suited to beginners but also  prized by more experienced gardeners   too. And I’ll be showing you a few other  things you’ll need to consider later on. The first bed is for beans and peas.  Why? Because these are some of the   most productive plants you can grow,  so they are well worth including.

With the afternoon sun over there shining  in this direction, I’ve included the peas   and beans towards the back back of the bed so they  don’t overshadow plants further towards the front. Now these climbers will need support. So for  that I will include some canes supported by  

A ridge pole for them to climb up. The  peas and beans will need regular picking   but so long as you do that you should get  a steady supply of protein-packed pods. Now there’s a bit of a space  here at the front of the bed,  

And there I’m going to include a  lovely row of iron-rich spinach,   one of my favorite greens. If you’re in a hot  climate you could just switch things around   by putting the spinach at the back to benefit  from the shade of those climbing peas and beans.

Let’s hop on over to here, into what will  be a bed of potatoes. Now variety is the   spice of life so I am growing two types  of potatoes in this bed – a row here of   early or salad potatoes, and then  here a row of maincrop potatoes,  

Which will mature later on in the summer to  give us some lovely potatoes for storing. Now potatoes are generally trouble-free, so  long as you keep them well watered. But to   help them along still further I’m going to  include a row of garlic between them here.

Now garlic is great at repelling aphids,  including potato aphid and green peach aphid,   both of which can attack potatoes,  so it makes sense to include them. And this is what I love about  planning nice and early like this:   it gives you time to hone the  perfect crop combinations,  

So you get the maximum benefit between them  – something we call ‘companion planting’. And you’ll notice that the beds are no  wider than 4 foot or 1.2 metres across,   and that means I can access the middle of  the bed without having to step on the soil.

It also keeps everything nice and tidy  and well-ordered having beds like this. Now the paths are also wide enough to  allow easy access between the beds,   especially with a wheelbarrow,   which is an important consideration  when shifting barrowloads of compost about.

Okay, so onto our third bed, which I am dedicating  to salads. And there’s a lovely row of radish and   then arugula or rocket. I’ve got some lettuce  and then right at the front a row of beet root.

All of these plants will grow to roughly the  same height, so they won’t shade each other out. Now what I love about this bed is that I’m  going to include a lovely row of sweet alyssum   in between them here. Alyssum is a vegetable  garden flower that really works hard for the  

Space it occupies. The frothy flowers are  hugely attractive to tiny wasps and other   pest predators that will help to control aphids  – something that lettuce can suffer from. This   is one reason why I include this hardworking  plant in various spots throughout the garden,  

Because it really does help to keep pests  down and it flowers from months on end. Look here’s some still flowering its  heart out really late in the season. Wow! The fourth and final of our beds is a bed  full of sun seekers bursting with flavor.  

Zucchini or courgette are well worth including  because, like our beans over there, these guys   will keep on pumping out the fruits time and  again so long as you keep on picking of course. Then I’m also going to include, of course,  a row of tomatoes. And I will be choosing  

Blight-resistant varieties to ensure  I don’t get any problems with them. And then some companion plants for  good measure, including parsley   for its incredible pest predator-attracting  qualities, and then a row of basil here. And   basil is a natural companion to tomatoes  both in the garden and in the kitchen.

And I’m also going to be including a  few chili pepper plants at the front   here and some nasturtiums. Nasturtiums  are fabulous flowers which sprawl here,   there and everywhere, helping to shade the  soil while adding a welcome splash of color. Every part of nasturtiums are  edible, including the flowers,  

Which I love to add as a finishing  flourish to a garden-made salad. If you’re starting a garden for the first time  don’t forget that different vegetables need sowing   at different times. In our salad bed, for example,  many of these guys can be sown quite early in  

Spring, whereas zucchini or courgette needs to be  started off much later. But more on that shortly. All of these plants, and especially those in the  last bed, need plenty of light. Now my garden   faces the afternoon sun at what is normally  the warmest time of the day. That’s important  

Because sunshine is directly proportional to  growth. Good amounts of sunlight mean stronger,   healthier plants and faster growth, so I  would suggest prioritizing the sunniest   part of your garden for growing your fruit and  veg. You’ll get that stronger growth, of course,   and more importantly better-tasting produce,  especially from fruiting crops like tomatoes.

Of course, some plants will do just  fine with a little bit of shade,   including leafy greens. So here’s  a handy table with crops divided   by sunshine requirements to  help you plan accordingly. But shade can be your friend too. If you suffer  from exceptionally hot summers then you might  

Want to actually seek out an area that gets  some shade during the hottest part of the day,   or perhaps plan to grow taller crops  that might be able to cast shade for   lower growers that will appreciate  the cooler environment this gives.

Even in a more temperate climate like mine,  a little bit of shade can be useful for   some things like, for example, lettuce.  Lettuce can be prone to bolting in hot,   dry weather, so by casting light shade  it can keep the soil cooler and moister  

For longer and ensure that you  are picking it for longer too. Shelter from prevailing winds will help to keep  plants from getting buffeted about and if you   don’t have any you can always create some. Hedges  or shrubs make excellent wind breaks but will,  

Of course, take time to establish before they  are dense enough to shelter surrounding plants. So in the meantime you could  use screens or, for example,   taller-growing, fast-growing vegetables  like Jerusalem artichokes or sunchokes. Shelter’s great but try to avoid areas with lots  of overhanging branches or searching tree roots  

That will either cast shade or compete  for valuable resources at ground level. Now one downside about my garden here  is that over time the branches have   grown out and cast more shade, so I  will be doing a little bit of light  

Winter pruning to knock everything  back a bit to let more light in. Soil is where everything starts. Now the perfect  soil is free-draining yet able to hold on to   enough moisture between rain showers. But few  of us have the perfect soil, so whether yours  

Is very sandy and dries out very, very quickly,  or clay and prone to winter waterlogging and then   cracking, baking hard in the summer, the solution  is the same: plenty of well-rotted organic matter   such as compost or well-rotted manure. And this  can just be laid on the surface like I’ve done  

Here for the worms and other microorganisms  to take down into the soil over time. My garden gets insanely wet during the winter  months. Now there’s a spring somewhere over   there and after a few days of rain, well, the  whole garden can turn to a wet, slippery shimmer.

I found that the solution to all of this in my  particular circumstance is to grow in raised beds,   which drain much better in wet winter  weather. Now, of course, growing in raised   beds is by no means essential and growing  directly in the ground works just fine too.

My beds were placed onto what was originally  lawn. I dug them into the slope of the hill   to ensure a level planting surface – and  that just makes it a lot easier when it   comes to watering because it doesn’t  just run off the surface downhill.

I then filled the beds with a selection  of composts and we were good to go. And   I’ve done a video on how to set up beds like  this and I will pop a link to it down below. Plants need extra water in dry weather  and watering will help seedlings and  

Young plants to establish. So,  if you can, locate your garden   close to a water source. Mine is at the  front of the house away from the garden. That’s not ideal, so I use a long, extendable  hose to reach around the back where the garden is.

Treated mains water works, but collected  rainwater works even better and should be   prioritized. So design in some water collection  barrels like this, and the more the merrier! Harvest rainwater from guttering  connected to the house, sheds,   greenhouses – any surface area that  can collect plenty of the wet stuff.

Gardens produce lots of organic matter  over the course of a year: old prunings,   spent crops, leaves, weeds… and  all of this can be recycled back   into the garden to feed future crops for  free. So remember space for composting. In a small garden this might  be a simple lidded compost bin,  

While in a larger garden a series of  composting bays might be the solution.   Whatever your situation, don’t let any of  this good stuff go to waste – compost it! Storage is essential for keeping tools and  equipment dry. I try to keep everything as  

Convenient as possible so I can just  grab what I need for each gardening   session and crack on with it. Even if  you don’t have space for a full-size   shed you might have space for a simple  garden store or perhaps a bench with  

Built-in storage for your most-used  tools, pots and other bits and bobs. The design for these four beds has  been taken from the Garden Planner   and I’ve used the Beginner Garden plan  there and adapted it to suit my space. Now you can find it there, along  with a selection of other sample  

Plans. If you don’t like any of the  vegetables I’ve mentioned, well,   no problem. Just swap them out to ones  you do like and the Garden Planner will   automatically space them and work out how  many plants you need for the area you have.

Best of all, it will then build a  personalized planting plan showing   you exactly when to sow them,  plant them out and, if you like,   it will even email you planting reminders  to keep you on track. How fab is that!

And the best bit is you can try out the Garden  Planner completely free, and you don’t need to   put in any payment details to do so. You’ll  find a link to the Garden Planner down below. We’ve done a complete guide to planning  larger spaces with a wider variety of crops,  

Which you can view next. In the meantime,  please do let me know what you’re hoping   to grow in the coming growing season in the  comments below. I’ll catch you next time!