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Will it fit here?

Planting advice for a spot in your garden: light, soil and moisture, space, the distance to the boundary, and good and bad neighbours.

Want to plant something? In your garden, choose Will it fit here?, tap the spot and choose a plant. You get an instant verdict: Good, Caution or Not advised, with the reasons why.

#What Bladwijzer looks at

• The light, soil and moisture the species needs.
• The light at that spot: how many hours of sun it gets, with the shade of your house, the buildings around it and your trees (see Sun and aspect).
• Space: how wide and tall the plant will grow, and whether there’s room for it.
• Distance to the boundary: 2 m for trees, 0.5 m for shrubs and hedges (the rule in Belgium and the Netherlands).
• The neighbours, for example:
  • walnuts inhibit other plants (juglone);
  • juniper and pear share pear rust;
  • currants and five-needle pines share blister rust;
  • fireblight in fruit trees and hawthorn;
  • strangling climbers on young trees;
  • shade under dense crowns;
  • fruit trees that need a pollinator.

Happy with the advice? Choose Save to my garden: the plant is added as planned. Set it to Planted later on.

Under Points to watch in your garden you’ll find the conflicts between all the plants that are already there. If you have already dealt with a point or are leaving it that way on purpose, tap × to archive it. You’ll find it under Archived, where Restore returns it to the points to watch. Anyone who can edit the garden can archive.

#Your garden soil

As soon as your garden is on the map, Bladwijzer looks up the soil at that spot. You see it in the Soil section, e.g. Sandy soil · Acid · Dry, with tips for that soil.

• Soil type and moisture come from the soil map of Flanders or Wallonia (sand, loam, clay or peat, and how wet the soil is). Outside Belgium the soil type comes from SoilGrids.
• Acidity comes from SoilGrids (ISRIC), a soil map of the whole world at 250 m.
• For a vegetable garden without a map, choose Use my location.
• Not right, or do you know better (e.g. after a pH test or a soil analysis)? Choose Change and fill it in yourself. Your own choice always takes priority.

The lookup starts straight away and you see how many seconds it has taken so far. If a soil map doesn’t answer, Bladwijzer tries again by itself (after 2, 5 and 10 seconds). If it still doesn’t work, choose Try again, or fill in the soil yourself. Under Sun and aspect, looking up the buildings on OpenStreetMap works the same way.

Will it fit here? takes that soil into account: if a plant wants acid soil and yours is chalky, or it can’t stand wet feet in wet clay, you’ll see it, with what you can do about it. The same goes for what you sow and plant in the vegetable garden.

To see what grows well in your soil, go to Garden plants: choose What grows well in this soil? in the Soil section.

#In a pot or container

If a plant is in a pot or container with its own potting compost, tick In a pot or container for that plant. In a vegetable garden you can do that for a whole bed (Pot or container with potting compost). Bladwijzer then gives no tips about your garden soil. Indoors everything is in a pot, so there is no soil.

#What fits here?

Will it fit here? starts from a plant. What fits here? starts from a spot: choose it in your garden (or under Sun and aspect) and tap the spot. You see:

• the light at that spot (hours of sun, from the sun map, or from your garden’s aspect);
• your garden soil;
• the space: how wide a crown can grow before it reaches the plants, buildings and boundary around it.

Below that, per group (perennials, shrubs, trees, climbers, bulbs…), the plants from the guide and the catalogue that suit it: enough light, no soil they’re advised against, and enough room. Plants that suit it well and are good for bees, butterflies and birds come first. We don’t suggest invasive non-natives, or trees within 2 m of the boundary. Under a big tree there is room for low plants that tolerate shade.

Choose Put here: the plant is added to your garden as planned, with the advice from Will it fit here?.

#Make a border

Open Make a border at this spot, enter the length and depth, and choose Make a plan. You get plants in layers (tall at the back, low at the front), with the number of each, that flower together for as long as possible from March to October, with bulbs for spring in between. Only hardy species, preferably good for bees and butterflies, and never the same genus twice. Another suggestion gives a different mix; Add to my garden as planned puts each species on the map as a planned plant (the back facing north). Move is then switched on: drag them into place and choose Done.

#Sun and aspect

If your garden is on the map, Bladwijzer looks up the buildings around it (OpenStreetMap) and works out how many hours of sun each spot gets, averaged from April to August. The Sun and aspect section shows:

• the aspect: the direction from your house to your garden, e.g. South-west-facing garden: sun from late morning until the evening;
• how much of your garden is in full sun (6 hours or more), partial shade (3 to 6 hours) or shade (less than 3 hours).

Choose Show on the map, or turn on the Sun and shade layer at the top right of the map: you see sun, partial shade or shade for every spot. At the bottom left, the arrow points north.

Bladwijzer takes into account the shade of:

• your house and the buildings around it. If the height of your house is wrong, choose the number of storeys. If a garden shed, garage or high wall isn’t on the map, choose Draw a building, tap its corners and say how tall it is;
• your trees and large shrubs, fully grown. A dense crown (beech, lime) lets less light through.

Low sun (less than 15° above the horizon) doesn’t count: in a residential area, houses, hedges and trees further away block it anyway.

Will it fit here? uses that light: put lavender against the back wall of a north-facing garden and you’ll see Not enough sun, with the number of hours at that spot.

#Without a map: choose or measure the aspect

In a vegetable garden, or if we can’t find your house, choose which way your garden faces under Location yourself. Or measure it with your phone’s compass:

1. Stand with your back to the wall of your house, facing the garden.
2. Hold your phone flat in front of you, with the top pointing at the garden.
3. Tap Measure and keep your phone still for a moment.

What you choose or measure takes priority over what the map says. Choose Clear to go back to the map.

Updated on 2026-10-14