All plants have grow zones where they will do best and most plants are adaptable to one degree or another. Often with a little manipulation in planting locations, many plants will do quite well in areas normally outside of their normal plant hardiness zones. But, whether you plant varieties hardy in your area, manipulate the growing area or plant in movable containers, you still need to know not only the minimum temperature USDA plant hardiness zones, but the USDA heat zones in which a plant grows well naturally as well. No longer is a single plant hardiness zones map sufficient. While cold has traditionally been the primary concern when planning and planting a single plant or an entire landscape, today's research coupled with the vast number of offerings available to today's growers has given rise to the need to also consider heat in your planting hardiness zones. In other words, gardeners are now starting to understand the need to consider all factors in their particular grow zones, both hot and cold.

If that weren't enough for the gardener to consider, today's gardener must now also start considering the climate change facts. Regardless of where you stand on the whole "global warming" issue, the facts prove that our climate is indeed changing. Through many years of research and observation, the prevailing weather patterns have been noted and plotted with average high and low temperatures. The corresponding climate change maps at the end of this page bear out the fact that things are not as they once were.

Nothing is simple anymore. That is why we brought together a collection of USDA plant hardiness zones, USDA heat zones and climate change maps to make the task of choosing the right plant for the location easier. By knowing where you wish to grow a particular plant and correlating it to the maps below, you can get a good estimation of the success you will have with that plant from a winters cold or summers heat standpoint. It makes good gardening and landscaping sense to start with the "zone facts" before making any decisions on plant choices for your area.

Cold Hardiness Zones

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The need for gardeners to be concerned with the effects of heat on plants and heat zones is relatively new to gardening. When the only plants normally available to gardeners were either native plants and their adaptations or those plants known to do well in a particular area, there was no need to concern ones self with USDA heat zones. As time progressed, the number of plants offered to gardeners began to explode and the average homeowner now had plants offered to them that once were either unheard of or not possible to obtain. Plant hybridization was exploding new offerings of every kind imaginable onto the gardening market.

As non-native plants became more and more commonplace in the average landscape it became apparent that, while a plant may be well adapted to the cold of an area, it would fail just as surely as the wrong plant in an area that was too cold. Thus came the study of heat on plants and the inevitable USDA heat zones map. While the consideration of heat zones on a particular plant species does tend to make gardening more complicated in some respects, it does provide the gardener with more tools to help them make the best plant choices for their area.

Climate Change

If things weren't complicated enough for the average gardener, with plant hardiness zones, heat zones, weather and all of the other environmental issues that confront us every day, now gardeners must be aware of climate change facts. There are also climate change maps now available to provide evidence that there is indeed something going on with the environment that we live and grow in. If you've been thinking that the seasons are not what they once were – you're right! We have no intention on this website to get into the debate regarding global warming beyond the climate change facts presented on the following climate change maps compiled by the Arbor Day Foundation from various sources. This and the fact and recognition that the seasons are not what they once were.