Your Plant Hardiness Zones

For all of you scientific gardeners out there (as opposed to the seat of the pants, whack a mole approach seemingly favored by people like me), we present the most current Plant Hardiness Zone map of these United States. These maps are published by the USDA, and divide the country up into 13 different zones based on the average annual minimum temperature that can be expected in each.   If you're a computer gamer type, here is an interactive version of this map.

There are actually many other factors that dictate whether a certain plant will or won't thrive in your particular geographic zone, e.g. soil moisture, number of annual frosts, risk of sudden cold snaps, and summer heat levels. But average annual minimum temperature is a nice initial qualifier of the range of plants that will and won't survive in a particular place. For instance, we are in Zone 7b, which tells me that I won't be planting any Roystonea regia around here - at least, not any that will last out the winter: