When you buy greenhouses for your garden, you probably plan to put them wherever you have space, or wherever you think they’ll look most attractive. Stop. Positioning a greenhouse is more complicated than that. If you want to get the best out of it all year round, and if you want to reduce the risk of it being damaged by the elements, there are several other things you need to consider.

Protecting your greenhouse from strong wind is an important consideration, as this is a leading cause of broken panels - and, of course, one broken panel can cause the temperature in your greenhouse to plummet, killing all your plants. If your garden gets strong winds which usually come from the same direction, you may want to consider lean-to greenhouse types, with the solid wall of your house or one of your outbuildings on the windward side of offer protection. If any greenhouses for your garden are inevitably going to be more exposed, consider greenhouse types such as quonset greenhouse. The curved sides of this structure mean that wind has nowhere to latch on to - there’s no point at which pressure can build up to a destructive level.

It’s probably obvious that greenhouses for your garden should be positioned where they can get the most possible light, but what many people overlook is that this position changes during the course of the year. Often a greenhouse which gets plenty of light in summer can be in trouble in winter when the sun doesn’t rise as far above the horizon, meaning that a building which was not previously a problem puts the greenhouse in shade for much of the day. It’s important to calculate the angle of the winter sun and position your greenhouse with this in mind. Bear in mind that some greenhouse types, such as timber framed greenhouses, let less light in to begin with and so require still more careful positioning.

If you keep these factors in mind, you should have a much more successful gardening experience, no matter which greenhouse types you opt to use.