A Quick Into to Hardiness Zones
Your hardiness zone is merely a label for the climate you live in which roughly informs you of what and when to plant. In the US we have a scale that goes from 0-13. Alaska is generally Zone 1 and Puerto Rico is Zone 13. Does that mean you can only grow plants that have a different hardiness zone? No, not if you don’t mind treating the plant as annual. For example, let’s say you’re in Zone 6 and you buy Calla lily tubers that are hardy from zones 9-10, you can still plant them but they won’t survive your zone’s winter temperatures. That just means you dig them up in Fall and replant in Spring.
Is there anything mildly interesting about Hardiness Zones? Not really, although German immigrant and botanist Alfred Render who was the first to work out the hardiness zone system in the US was suspected of being a WW1 German spy. He probably wasn’t, but it’s interesting. Another interesting (and worrying) thing is that our climate is changing and slowly but surely so are our hardiness zones. Don’t believe me? You can see the changes in the US from 1990 to 2006 at https://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm
US Zone Look up by Plantmaps.com