By Johnson 
Whether you’re starting seedlings, raising tender fruit trees, or cultivating houseplants, a greenhouse opens up lots of opportunities.
It can extend the growing season, create a humid environment for tropical plants, or provide a cozy way to garden when the weather turns chilly.
If you’re daydreaming about what you could grow with a hothouse on your property, it might be time to learn how to fit a greenhouse into your garden.
In our guide to greenhouse gardening we provide a good foundation for getting started with this growing method.
This article will help you find the best location in your yard or garden for a greenhouse.
Taking time to ask yourself a few questions beforehand will save you a lot of heartache and wasted money, since choosing a poor location is one of the most common greenhouse mistakes to avoid.
Ready to get started?
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Know What You Want to Grow
Whether you intend to purchase a greenhouse or build one yourself, the most important question is what do you plan to grow?
Before you answer “Duh, everything!” let’s consider the options.
Call them what you want – greenhouse, hothouse, glasshouse, hoop house – there are multiple uses for these structures.
The most common reason gardeners want a backyard greenhouse is to extend the growing season and enjoy delicious homegrown crops for more of the year.
Having a glasshouse can give you more room for starting tomatoes from seed, growing cool season crops throughout the winter, or overwintering your favorite hot pepper plants!
Growing your own food is certainly an economical way to provide super local, homegrown nourishment for your family – an endeavor that’s rewarding in countless ways.
But some of us are tempted to install a garden greenhouse not for food production, but to expand our possibilities for growing obsession-inducing houseplants like orchids or succulents!
Many gardeners are excited by the prospect of having more space to grow succulents from seed or cultivate humidity-loving monsteras and prayer plants.
Of course, these aren’t the only options. You might also want to use a glasshouse to grow perennials or cultivate your own native wildflowers.
I’m starting with the question “What do you want to grow?” because your choice of plants determines how much sunlight you will need and therefore where you should place the structure in your garden.
If you want to grow food crops or sun-lovers such as cacti, you’ll need to situate the hothouse in full sun.
But if you plan to cultivate houseplants that prefer bright indirect light, you’ll have more flexibility about where to position it.
When looking for the perfect spot for the structure, remember, you can always add shade within the hothouse, but it’s much more challenging to make it less shady after the structure is installed in your yard or garden.
Check Sun and Shade
Speaking of shade – once you know what you want to grow you can start to scope out locations in your yard or garden that have the right amount of sunlight.
When surveying your yard, be sure to observe at different times of the day.
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so the amount of solar exposure in any given spot changes throughout the day.
That means that if you situate your greenhouse close to a tree, the tree will cast shade on the structure for part of the day – unless the tree is positioned to the north of the structure.
And unlike deciduous trees with leaves that change color and drop in autumn, coniferous trees will cast shade all year long.
When examining trees and shrubs in your garden landscape, don’t forget to think about the ones that are still maturing.
Over time, a currently small shrub like American holly or camellia may grow to be even taller than the hothouse!
So inspect the locations in the garden that you are considering for the glasshouse and make sure they aren’t going to be too shady – or too sunny! – for the plants you intend to cultivate.
Also check to make sure that when it’s in place, your greenhouse won’t cast shade on an area of your garden that needs full sun – such as your square foot garden beds.
A great way to find the best spot for sun exposure is to make a sketch of your garden in a gardening journal and play around with a few different layouts until you find the right one.
Assess Site Conditions
Once you’ve identified an appropriate location, make sure your chosen spot can actually accommodate a greenhouse.
The most perfect sunny location won’t work if the ground isn’t suitable for building.
First, check if the area is level. These structures need a flat, stable foundation, and leveling sloped ground can quickly turn into a major expense.
Next, consider drainage. You don’t want your greenhouse sitting in a spot where water collects after rainfall.
Poor drainage can lead to foundation problems and create a soggy, unusable space. Look for areas where water tends to pool during storms, and avoid these spots.
Also think about soil stability. Soft, marshy ground or areas with loose fill dirt may not provide adequate support for a foundation.
You’ll want to ensure that you don’t situate your structure in a spot that is exposed to high winds.
Finally, check for underground utilities before you commit to a location. You don’t want to discover gas lines, water pipes, or electrical cables when you start digging your foundation.
Taking time to evaluate these basic site conditions ahead of time will save you headaches and potential expense later.
Evaluate Utility Connections
Hopefully, you have more than one possibility in mind for placing the hothouse – especially if you need to bring in utilities like water or electricity.
Are you planning to install an unheated greenhouse or will you heat it?
Unless you’re going solar or passive solar, heated greenhouses require access to electricity in the spot you’re considering.
Similarly, if you want lighting, electricity is essential unless you use solar options.
So make sure an electrician can easily connect the glasshouse to your electrical system – bringing electricity to remote locations like the farthest corner of your property can become a considerable expense.
If you can place the glasshouse closer to your home where utility connections are readily available, you may save yourself a significant investment.
Even more important for most of us is access to water.
While a water tap and sink within the greenhouse may sound like an unnecessary luxury, if you don’t at least have a garden hose nearby, you’ll be hauling a lot of water.
So consider your needs for both electricity and water before you finalize the location for the glasshouse.
Plan Access to the Greenhouse
While creating utility connections to the hothouse is certainly optional depending on your needs, you’ll at least need to make sure that you and your family can easily access it.
Just because you have plenty of unobstructed space at the back of your property doesn’t mean that’s the best spot.
Positioning it closer to your home rather than farther away might be the best option, because if you locate the structure somewhere inconvenient to reach, you’ll be less likely to use it.
On this note, make sure you have clear pathways to the structure as well, and consider whether the pathways need to accommodate just the width of a person or the width of a wheelbarrow too.
And what about accessibility? Do you have any friends or family members who use mobility aids?
Planning ahead by making your greenhouse wheelchair accessible will make it welcoming to more people.
Calculate Adequate Space
Now that you know what you intend to grow and have identified a possible location in your garden that provides the right amount of sunlight, utility connections, and easy access, you’re ready to start calculating the footprint of the structure.
Exciting, isn’t it?
When you’re ready to calculate the space needed for the structure, first measure the area where you want the hothouse to fit.
How much room do you have? Did you remember to factor in several feet on each side of the structure so that it isn’t positioned directly against garden beds, landscaping, or other installations?
If you don’t leave some space between the hothouse and the surrounding elements of your garden, you’ll create a cramped and uncomfortable situation, and possibly safety risks as well.
It’s easy to avoid tripping over a raised garden bed when you have several feet of space to maneuver around it. But if you only have two feet between the bed and the greenhouse wall, that raised bed becomes a trip hazard.
Not to mention, you won’t be able to easily access that side of the raised garden bed to harvest your crops!
How much room is needed around the greenhouse varies depending on multiple factors, but leaving at least five feet of space on each side will reduce accident hazards.
Accessibility to surrounding plantings isn’t the only reason to put some distance between the greenhouse and nearby landscaping.
Hothouse growers in Australia are advised to allow at least five meters (16.4 feet) of buffer space on each side of these structures to prevent the spread of diseases and pests from surrounding vegetation – with buffer zones covered in gravel, mulch, or well-maintained lawn.
While most backyard gardeners may not have quite that much room to spare around a glasshouse, we can still take inspiration from this practice of creating buffer zones to protect hothouse plants from pests and diseases.
Some greenhouse gardeners prefer to spray insecticide directly around the building to prevent infestations, an approach that’s made easier when there’s little or nothing growing directly around the hothouse.
If you prefer an organic approach – keep reading, there are alternatives coming up shortly.
So once you’ve found the perfect spot for the structure, add in some room for a buffer before you decide what size greenhouse you’ll install.
Landscape Around a Greenhouse
You now have the perfect location for your hothouse and know what the footprint of the structure will be.
What about landscaping around the hothouse? Ideally, your hothouse is attractive – something you’ll enjoy looking at when you step out your back door.
If it’s not, or if someone in your household doesn’t find it appealing, you might consider landscaping to screen it from view.
Depending on the solar orientation of the structure, a vegetative screen might work for you – or it might not.
Remember our earlier discussion about checking sun and shade? Take care not to ruin your excellent planning by planting vegetation around the glasshouse that will end up too tall.
For instance, if you plant skyrocket junipers on either side of the door to your hothouse, those beautiful conifers will end up shading the interior – unless they’re on the north side of the structure.
Instead of large shrubs or trees, choose low-growing options. A good replacement for the junipers mentioned above would be creeping juniper, which grows to just two feet tall.
Of course, low-growing plants won’t screen a greenhouse – if that’s something you really need to do, you’ll need to plant the vegetative screen far enough from the structure that it doesn’t cast shade.
Are you wondering about the alternatives to keeping pests at bay that I hinted at above?
If you’re growing food crops near the hothouse, be sure to incorporate companion planting into your pest control strategies. There are scientifically-backed benefits to companion planting.
If ornamental garden plantings are more your style, consider converting at least part of the beds around your greenhouse to a native plant landscape.
Native species will attract pollinators and other beneficial insects like native wasps, which will in turn help keep pest populations at bay.
Whatever landscaping you add around your greenhouse – beyond the buffer zone of course – make sure to select perennials or shrubs that are low-growing, no more than two to three feet tall.
Finding the Perfect Fit
By knowing what you want to grow, making observations about sunlight availability, planning for accessibility and utility connections, adding room for a buffer around the structure, and keeping landscaping limitations in mind, you should have found the perfect spot in your garden for a greenhouse!
But if reading these considerations made you realize you don’t yet have room for such a structure, perhaps you should consider a much smaller cold frame instead?
Read our beginner’s guide to using cold frames to learn more!
Did this article help you find the perfect fit for a greenhouse in your garden? Let us know what you’ve decided in the comments section below! And if you still need help deciding on the best spot, feel free to drop your garden photos and questions there as well.
Want to learn more about gardening in greenhouses and cold frames? We have more reading for you right here: