Proper direction to orient a hugel bed

I am collecting wood from around the yard and trees to build my first hugel bed. Does it matter in what direction to orient it? The rows in my garden run north-south, as this was recommended by various gardening books to prevent shade from falling on adjacent plants. But if my pile of buried wood runs that way, then the western side will be in shade for most of the day. So, should I lay the wood to run east-west? The shade from the pile won't fall on much of anything where I plan to place it.

By the amount of wood that i am collecting, it will be at least a few feet tall, perhaps not the 5 feet recommended.

I'm lazy and don't want to have to demolish it and start over.

I have no direct experience (yet) as I'm building my first hugel this year also. That said, my understanding is that you want the orientation to vary, so that you create different microclimates and "edge". I've built mine in a curve, in the hopes that I can also create a sunscoop in the middle.

I'd generally orient it east to west. That way there's good southern exposure (sunlight) all during the day & the other side will be a bit shadier & cooler for things that prefer that. It seems the taller it is the more micro climate effect there is.

A variety is nice, my first set on the farm are in a vaguely sun-scoop shape around a pond.


In a smaller, shadier space at my parents place, I built one east-west, and one north-south. In that shady site, the north-south didn't work great; any added shading was Bad News, and the south end was too small to be useful, and too close to the shaded edge of the garden. After a year I built some log walls around it and converted to a raised bed, which worked very well.

The east-west one worked better, but growing on the north was a lost cause. I used pallets to enclose just the north side, and gave the whole thing a south-facing slope, which worked out nicely.

I'm getting ideas; thanks to having a lot of woods scraps, logs and branches to work with, I may be able to use many of the suggestions.

I never thought of arranging it in a way to form a ’sunscoop.’

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