When deciding on your garden location, it is wise to observe where the sun shines and how long it shines on a particular patch of ground. The amount of sun an area of ground gets is crucial to growing healthy plants.

When determining how much sun is good for your garden, it is important to know what you will be growing and what the sunlight requirements are for those particular plants. Seed packets will describe sunlight requirements on the label. You will see 3 choices on most seed packets. These sunlight choices are: "sun", "shade" and "partial sun". "sun" means that at least 8 hours of sunlight is required each day. "shade" means that less than 4 hours of direct sunlight is needed and "partial sun" means somewhere between 4 hours and 6 hours of sunlight is required each day.

Soil is probably the most important ingredient to successful organic gardening. If the soil is poor quality, no matter how good the plants are, they will suffer from poor soil and not grow properly.

Choose native plants because they are hardy and know how to thrive in your local climate.

Take advantage of the timesavings that perennials bring to your planting choice. Perennials are plants that come back year after year and saves you time on replanting.

Companion planting is smart because different plant species help other plant species and do well planted near each other. When you plant leeks, carrots and onions near each other, they will repel the pests from each other.

Attract the "good" bugs. There are some insects that gardeners want to see invade their gardens. Lady beetles are one such good bug. They like sunflowers and lupine, gardeners who plant these will see lady beetles in their gardens. Lady beetles eat aphids, which are a big problem for gardeners.

Garden Design can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it. Spontaneous gardeners will plant flowers and greenery at whim and then sit back to see how it looks. Others will put pencil to paper and plan out their garden based on plant height, color combinations, texture, scent and even soil needs.