Garden
When to Plant
What Planting Zone Am I In? Find Yours, Then See What It Decides
Enter your ZIP code on the USDA's Plant Hardiness Zone Map and it gives you your zone in one click. The number tells you one thing: the coldest winter your garden normally gets, and therefore which perennials survive it in the ground. It does not tell you when to plant anything.
Get your number first
Put your ZIP code into the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. One box, one click, and it gives you a zone like 6b or 8a. It's free, it's the source everybody else is quoting, and we're not going to pretend we can do it better.
That's the whole lookup. The rest of this page is what the number is for, because a zone is a good answer to one question and no answer at all to the question most people are actually asking. Those are not the same question.
Your zone is the average coldest night of your winter, in 10°F bands. That's all it is. Zone 6 averages a low of −10 to 0°F in a normal winter; zone 7 averages 0 to 10°F. Half-zones split each band in two — 6a is the colder half of zone 6, 6b the milder half. That's the entire system.
What the number actually decides
One question, and it's a real one. Will this plant live through my winter, outdoors, in the ground?
That only matters for plants you expect to still be there next spring. A rosemary bush, an apple tree, a blueberry, a rhubarb crown. Those have to get through January standing where you put them, and for that the zone is exactly the right instrument. This is the job it was built for.
It's the wrong instrument for a tomato. A tomato is an annual, so it'll be dead by Christmas in every zone in the country and it was always going to be. Your winter minimum tells you nothing at all about when to put one out in spring. Different question, different number.
53 perennials, and the coldest zone each one survives
This is our own crop data, and it's the part of this page nobody else on the search prints. Every one of these is a plant that has to get through winter where it stands, with the zone range each crop's record carries. Each record is built from that crop's own extension sources. Blueberry's cites eleven.
Sorted by the cold end, because that's the number that decides whether the plant lives.
| Perennial crop | USDA zones | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Asparagus | 2–9 | Vegetable |
| Honeyberry | 2–7 | Berry |
| Horseradish | 2–9 | Vegetable |
| Blueberry | 3–8 | Berry |
| Catnip | 3–9 | Herb |
| Cherry (Sweet & Sour/Tart) | 3–8 | Fruit tree |
| Common Yarrow | 3–9 | Herb |
| Currant | 3–7 | Berry |
| Gooseberry | 3–6 | Berry |
| Lemon Balm | 3–9 | Herb |
| Purple Coneflower | 3–8 | Herb |
| Sorrel (garden sorrel) | 3–7 | Herb |
| Sunchoke (Jerusalem artichoke) | 3–9 | Vegetable |
| American Elderberry | 4–8 | Berry |
| Anise Hyssop | 4–8 | Herb |
| Apple | 4–9 | Fruit tree |
| Apricot | 4–8 | Fruit tree |
| Bee Balm | 4–9 | Herb |
| Chives (common chives) | 4–8 | Herb |
| European Pear | 4–8 | Fruit tree |
| Fennel | 4–9 | Herb |
| French Tarragon | 4–8 | Herb |
| Garlic | 4–9 | Vegetable |
| Goji Berry | 4–9 | Berry |
| Kiwi | 4–9 | Fruit tree |
| Lovage | 4–9 | Herb |
| Mint | 4–9 | Herb |
| Mulberry | 4–9 | Fruit tree |
| Oregano | 4–8 | Herb |
| Persimmon | 4–10 | Fruit tree |
| Plum | 4–9 | Fruit tree |
| Red Raspberry | 4–8 | Berry |
| Rhubarb | 4–7 | Vegetable |
| Sage (garden/common sage) | 4–8 | Herb |
| Blackberry | 5–9 | Berry |
| English Lavender | 5–8 | Herb |
| Feverfew | 5–8 | Herb |
| Grape | 5–10 | Fruit tree |
| Peach | 5–9 | Fruit tree |
| Strawberry | 5–9 | Berry |
| Thyme | 5–9 | Herb |
| Winter Savory | 5–10 | Herb |
| Scallion (green onion / bunching onion) | 6–9 | Vegetable |
| Fig | 7–10 | Fruit tree |
| Globe artichoke | 7–10 | Vegetable |
| Lemongrass | 8–11 | Herb |
| Mandarin | 8–11 | Fruit tree |
| Pomegranate | 8–10 | Fruit tree |
| Rosemary | 8–10 | Herb |
| Grapefruit | 9–11 | Fruit tree |
| Lemon | 9–11 | Fruit tree |
| Lime | 9–11 | Fruit tree |
| Orange | 9–11 | Fruit tree |
The two numbers do not mean the same kind of thing
Everybody prints a range like 3–8 as though both ends were the same measurement. They aren't. Our own field definitions say so in writing.
The low number is a hard limit. It's the coldest zone where the plant survives winter outdoors in place and starts growing again in spring. Get it wrong and the plant is dead, not disappointing.
The high number is a judgment, and it isn't about heat. It's the warmest zone where the plant still performs well. A USDA zone indexes winter minimum temperature and says nothing whatsoever about summer, so a "max zone" is never a heat-tolerance figure. Usually it means the plant wants a certain amount of winter cold and stops fruiting properly without it. A blueberry above zone 8 isn't scorched. It's under-chilled.
So the low end is a wall and the high end is a shrug. If you're one zone warmer than the top of the range, look up whether that crop needs chill hours before you assume you're fine.
What your zone will not tell you
It won't tell you when to plant anything.
Planting dates hang off your last spring frost, the day freezing nights are finished with you, and a zone doesn't measure that. It measures how cold your worst night gets. Not when the cold nights stop. Two gardens can share a zone and be a month apart on the day it's safe to put tomatoes out.
We measured how far apart people really are. Grouping every US weather station with a full record by state, the middle state runs 25 days between its 10th and 90th percentile station, and California runs 111. The whole thing, with all 47 states, is in when to plant tomatoes in your zone.
For the date itself, the frost date lookup computes it for your address rather than a band on a map. It's free and there's no signup.
Questions people actually ask
What is my planting zone by ZIP code?
Enter it on the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map and you get the answer immediately. That map is the authority every other site is quoting, including the ones that make you scroll past an article first. It was last updated in 2023. A lot of the country moved half a zone warmer in that revision, so a zone you learned years ago may not be your zone now.
What is the difference between a planting zone and a growing zone?
Nothing. Planting zone, growing zone, hardiness zone and USDA zone all mean the same thing — the average coldest winter night where you live, in 10°F bands. The variety of names is why the question gets asked so often, not a sign that there are different systems.
Does my zone tell me when to plant?
No, and this is the commonest way people lose seedlings. A zone measures how cold your worst winter night gets. A planting date depends on when your spring freezes stop, which is a different measurement, and two gardens in one zone can be weeks apart on it. Use your last frost date for planting, and your zone for deciding whether a perennial survives.
Can I grow a plant outside its zone range?
Below the low end, not in the ground — that number is the winter that kills it. People do it anyway. They grow the plant in a pot and carry it inside, or bury it under heavy mulch, and both are real answers as long as you know you've taken on a job. Above the high end is a softer question, usually about whether the plant gets enough winter chill to fruit properly.
Did the zones change?
Yes. The USDA updated the map in 2023 using weather-station data from 1991 to 2020, and about half the country shifted to the next warmer half zone while the other half stayed put. Worth knowing what that does and doesn't mean: the USDA says those differences are mostly the result of using a more recent stretch of data, not a measurement of how much the climate warmed. Either way, if you're working from a number you learned before 2023, look it up again. It's one click and it may have moved.
Sources
Every planting date, depth, and temperature on this page traces to these university extension guides. Where they differ, the ranges above hold the whole spread.
- USDA Agricultural Research Service — USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map
- USDA Agricultural Research Service — USDA Unveils Updated Plant Hardiness Zone Map (2023)
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information — U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020, freeze/frost probabilities
The zone answers whether a perennial lives here. For when to put anything in the ground, that's a different number: when to plant tomatoes in your zone has the argument and the 47-state table, and the frost date lookup has your own date.
If you're planting perennials, which vegetables survive frost covers the other half of cold: not what lives through winter, but what shrugs off a single cold night in spring or fall.