About Sun Garden

Last updated 22 October 2026

Sun Garden is a free, non-commercial tool: draw an area on the map to estimate its sunlight, climate and soil, and see which plants suit it. It runs in your browser using free public data.

Disclaimer

Results are estimates from regional models and public maps, not measurements of your site. Sun hours depend on map data that can be missing or out of date (buildings, trees). Hardiness zones and frost dates come from ~50 km gridded climate data and can be off by a zone or by a week or two, especially in frost pockets. Soil data is a 250 m regional estimate. Use the results as a starting point, check with local sources, and use your own judgement. The site is provided as is, without any warranty, and we accept no liability for losses from its use.

Privacy

• No accounts, no cookies, no tracking or analytics. Sun Garden has no server of its own and doesn't collect anything about you.
• Stored in your browser only: the area and obstacles you draw and your soil choices (local storage), and a 30-day cache of data downloads (IndexedDB). Clearing this site's data in your browser removes them.
• Sent to public data services: to get its data, your browser contacts the services listed below directly. They receive the location of the area you draw (or the map view, or your search text) and, like any website, your IP address. This is often your home location, so draw only what you're comfortable sharing. Each service has its own privacy policy. Plant photos and links send only the plant's name, never your location.
• The site is hosted by Cloudflare, which keeps standard technical logs (such as IP addresses) to run and protect the site.

Data sources and credits

• Map and buildings: © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence. Map tiles from the OpenStreetMap Foundation; buildings via the Overpass API (overpass-api.de by FOSSGIS, overpass.private.coffee). Place search by Nominatim. Something wrong on the map? Report or fix it.
• Satellite imagery: Powered by Esri. Source: Esri, Vantor, GeoEye, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, USDA, USGS, AeroGRID, IGN, and the GIS User Community.
• Trees and roofs (Canada): High Resolution Digital Elevation Model (HRDEM), Natural Resources Canada. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
• Terrain horizon: Terrain Tiles from Mapzen/Tilezen via the AWS Open Data registry (full attribution), including: SRTM, GMTED2010 and 3DEP data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1 from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information; Canadian Digital Elevation Model, containing information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada; produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union – EU-DEM layers; ArcticDEM, created from DigitalGlobe, Inc. imagery and funded under National Science Foundation awards 1043681, 1559691 and 1542736; © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2017; © offene Daten Österreichs – Digitales Geländemodell (DGM) Österreich; © Kartverket; © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015, all rights reserved; Crown copyright © Land Information New Zealand; Source: INEGI, Continental relief, 2016.
• Climate, sunshine and frost dates: data obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) POWER Project, funded through the NASA Earth Science Division, retrieved live when you analyse an area. Use of NASA data does not imply NASA endorsement.
• Soil: SoilGrids by ISRIC – World Soil Information, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Sun position: SunCalc.
• Plant photos: from Wikimedia Commons, shown only with a confirmed licence; each photo is credited to its author with its licence and links to its source page.
• Plant list and planting guides: written for Sun Garden. Links to the Old Farmer's Almanac, Espace pour la vie and Wikipedia are for further reading; those sites are not affiliated with Sun Garden.

Software

Built with Leaflet, Geoman, geotiff.js, proj4js and other open-source packages. Their licences and copyright notices are in third-party-licenses.txt.