How the sun moves across your garden, by season

How does the sun move across your house and garden?

In the Netherlands the sun moves from east through south to west, and stands due south around midday every day of the year. Only its height changes with the season: on 21 June the sun in Amsterdam reaches 61 degrees above the horizon, on 21 December 14 degrees. Every sun position in this article is calculated with SunCalc, the sun-path library Schaduwplan itself uses.

Where the sun rises and sets shifts with it. On 21 June the sun in Amsterdam rises in the north-east (azimuth 48°) and sets in the north-west (312°): an arc of 264 degrees, a good part of which lies in the northern half of the sky. On 21 December it rises in the south-east (129°) and sets in the south-west (231°), an arc of just over 101 degrees. That difference is why a north-facing garden gets morning and evening sun in June and not a minute of it in December.

Latitude matters little within the Netherlands. On 21 June the sun reaches 62.6 degrees in Maastricht and 60.2 degrees in Groningen; on 21 December 15.7 against 13.3 degrees. Two degrees across the length of the country. What does matter is what stands around your house.

Sun position by season: how high does the sun get in the Netherlands?

The sun position in the Netherlands runs from 14 degrees around the winter solstice to 61 degrees around the summer solstice. That height determines how long shadows become. A house nine metres tall casts a midday shadow of 5.0 metres on 21 June and 35.6 metres on 21 December: more than seven times as long. The table below gives the four reference days for Amsterdam, in clock time (summer or winter time as it applies that day).

For plant choice these are the four days you want to measure. They split the growing season into quarters and show the two extremes your garden design has to live with. The TNO sunlight standard that municipalities use for permits picks different reference days (19 February, 21 June and 21 October), because that standard looks at living rooms rather than vegetable beds.

How much sun does my garden get?

How much sun your garden gets depends on three things: the direction your garden faces, what stands directly around it, and how tall that is. A 50 m² south-facing garden in Maastricht with low buildings around it can receive 2,000 direct sun hours a year. The same garden facing north with the neighbours’ detached house alongside it stays below 400 sun hours a year. The national average in the Netherlands, according to KNMI data, is around 1,800 sun hours.

Those numbers say something different from what the sun does at a specific spot in your garden. You are asking not only “how much sun does my plot get”, but “does that corner at the back of the garden where I want to plant a grape vine get enough sun to produce fruit?”. That is a point question, not a plot question. For that point question general climate data does not work; you need a 3D model of your house and surroundings plus an hour-by-hour sun-path calculation for every day.

How to see the sun position at your own address

A national sun-position table tells you where the sun is, not what stands between the sun and your terrace. That second answer comes from a 3D model of your own neighbourhood. In the free Schaduwplan viewer you can watch the sun move through the day at your own address, with the neighbours’ buildings at their real heights. It takes three steps.

1. Enter your address. The viewer loads the 3D model of your house and the surrounding buildings from 3DBAG, with heights from AHN.
2. Pick a reference day from the table above and drag the time slider. The shadow travels across your garden on screen.
3. Place measurement points where your questions are. Per point you get the sun duration on the chosen day.

If this is not about plant choice but about a building plan next door or a permit application, the sun duration on one reference day is the start and not yet the substantiation. For that you can commission a sunlight study, which puts the situation before and after the building plan side by side and tests it against the TNO standard.

Full sun, partial shade, shade: what those categories really mean

Every plant label from Intratuin to Praxis uses the same three or four categories. They are not arbitrary; they correspond to the number of hours of direct sun a plant needs to function healthily during the summer half of the year. The table below is the usual Dutch classification as Tuinieren.nl and Moestuinland apply it.

Important: the number of hours is specific to the summer months. A tomato that has seven hours of sun in July may, in the same spot in May, still be three hours short of adequate light. Plants often do not mind this (they only start to fruit once it is warm enough), but for the flowering times of ornamental plants you do notice it. A classic mistake is to measure on a sunny September day and then say “anything grows here”, while in April the same spot is still in shade two thirds of the time.

How to choose spots for your terrace, vegetable garden and seating area

A garden design stands or falls on the right spot for three functions: the terrace for the evening sun, the vegetable garden for full-sun plants, and the seating area for the morning sun. The ideal spots usually do not clash, but you do want to think it through carefully before you lay paving or dig out an earth bed.

• Terrace. Choose the evening sun. On 21 June, measure between 17:00 and 21:00 how much of the terrace gets direct sun. The ideal terrace orientation in the Netherlands is south-west to west, where the evening sun shines on the terrace for hours. A terrace directly against the rear façade of an east-west-oriented house risks lying entirely in its own shadow from 18:00.
• Vegetable garden. Choose the midday sun. On 21 June, measure between 10:00 and 15:00. Full-sun plants such as tomatoes want continuous sun during those hours. A location that lies in the shadow of the neighbouring house at 10:00 and only gets sun from 11:30 is marginal for fruiting vegetables, excellent for leafy greens.
• Seating area or morning breakfast. Choose the morning sun. On 21 June, measure between 07:00 and 10:00. A spot in the east of your garden that gets sun early is perfect for a small table where you drink your coffee; that same spot is often in shade from 14:00, which gives a cool resting place for the rest of the afternoon.
• Shade border. The north or east side of a tall wall or fence provides constant coolness. Ideal for hostas, ferns, astilbes and other foliage plants that cannot tolerate fierce midday sun.

The north-garden myth: is a north-facing garden a lost cause?

“Nothing grows in a north-facing garden” is one of the most stubborn garden clichés in the Netherlands. Not true. A north-facing garden is lit differently, not without light. The summer half of the year often yields between 400 and 800 direct sun hours, which is ample for a flowering border and a productive leafy-greens vegetable garden. The winter half of the year is shady, but that is less relevant for plant growth because most species are dormant then.

What does work differently in a north-facing garden:

• Direct sun comes mainly early in the morning (from the east) and late in the evening (from the west), not between 10:00 and 16:00. That means cool-loving plants get their sun in the morning and evening and are less prone to stress on hot days.
• Hostas, ferns and shade-lovers thrive exuberantly. A north-facing garden can be a treasure trove for anyone who loves foliage textures.
• Fruiting vegetables (tomato, pepper, aubergine) are possible in pots on the sunniest part, usually near the east or west boundary. Or move them to a windowsill with southern light.
• Vegetable-garden plants that bolt (run to seed, throw up flower stalks) with too much heat actually do well here. A lettuce bed in a sunny south-facing garden bolts within two weeks in July; in a north-facing garden it does not.

The only scenario in which a north-facing garden becomes really difficult: when tall buildings on the south side of your house cast additional shadow over the summer half of the year on top of that. Then you get a garden that receives fewer than 200 sun hours even in June. For situations like that, a concrete 3D calculation per quadrant is the only way to decide whether to replant or simply enjoy the coolness.

How Schaduwplan supports this process

The sun positions in the table above apply to the whole country. What your garden keeps of that sun depends on the buildings around it. Schaduwplan combines the two: the sun path from the SunCalc algorithms, the buildings from 3DBAG, the heights from AHN4. That is the work a garden designer would otherwise spend hours on by hand.

You place measurement points exactly where you have a question: the south-west corner where you are considering a terrace, the middle of the bed where the tomatoes should go, the spot by the back door where the morning table will stand. In the free preview you get, per measurement point, the sunlight duration in minutes on your chosen test date. The full annual analysis (with a heatmap of sunlight across the whole year) is in the PDF report, which you need when you also want to formally record the outcomes, for example with a garden architect or a large-scale vegetable-garden project.