Make a Garden Sun Chart

Sunny days just make you feel good.

It seems everything is better when the sun shines. Well plants like sun, too. They need sunshine to grow the best and give you the best vegetables and flowers. This is why picking a nice, sunny garden spot is important.

Take a walk around your yard and look for spots that have good sunlight, are easy to get water to, and aren't in the way of somebody else trying to have fun in the yard. You also might like to get a spot where people can see it, and you can show it off to everybody.

Because sunlight is important, you need to find out how much sun the spot you've picked gets. This is called exposure. A spot facing south is best. After you pick your garden spot, watch it for a few days to see how much sun it gets. You can do this with a sun chart

A teacher and three of his pupils planting flowers in a raised bed in the school garden in a school in Hexham in the North East of England. They are smiling and enjoying getting their hands dirty.
Make Learning Fun

Take a piece of white paper and mark where your building, fence, garage, walks and other things that don't move. Include big trees, too. Then, draw in where your garden is going to go. Then get ready to watch how the sun shines down on your garden spot.

  • In the morning, look to see where the sun is shining on your yard. Go to your paper and fill in with yellow stripes where the sun is shining.
  • About 1 in the afternoon, do the same thing with a blue crayon.
  • About 5 in the afternoon, do the same thing with an orange crayon.

If the sun shines in the same place through the day, you will see several different colored lines show up. The more colored lines you have on a spot tells you how long the sun shines in that area during the day. It also tells you what spots might be better for your garden. You might find out that the most sun spots aren't good for gardening. Pick the best spot you can get and have fun gardening.