North America is divided into climate regions called hardiness zones. It is important to understand the basic principles of hardiness zones in order to select plants that will survive in your specific climate region.
There are 11 zones in North America with Zone 1 being the coldest, going up to Zone 11 the mildest.
There are 10 zones for Europe and they follow the same principles as the North Americian hardiness zone map.

Zone determination takes into consideration several factors and the are as follows:

1-2) Minimum and maximum temperatures
3) Amount of rainfall during the growing season
4) Depth of snow cover,
5) Length of frost free periods,
6) Length of growing season and wind conditions.
7) The length of the growing season and the lowest temperature of the coldest month are the most important factors in establishing hardiness zones.

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Living in zone 5, there are literallly thousands upon thousands of plants that will survive in my zone. When purchasing a plant always check the back of the tag and find out what the zone requirements are, for example if it says will survive in zones 4-8, yet you live in zone 2 or 10 it is not a good idea to purchase the plant especially if this plant is a perinnial. If you are considering annuals even many of them have zone requirements.
To be safe, always find out the zone requirements before you purchase a plant.

Tomorrow I will do a write up on the difference between perinnials and annuals.



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Another photo of my crocuses, corms only grow in certain zones, they require fairly cold conditions in order to bloom so regardless to say the winters have to be somewhat cold.

Thats a wrap for today.