New garden map shows a milder Minnesota

[NickB79]

http://www.startribune.com/local/138093283.html

Minnesota is now officially a more comfortable place for many favorite garden and landscape plants -- and possibly some new ones -- but that doesn't mean grapefruit and palm trees are headed to a yard near you.

A new U.S. map of plant "hardiness zones," released Wednesday by the Agriculture Department and awaited by gardeners for more than 20 years, shows that levels of plant-killing winter cold in Minnesota have eased from border to border. That may not surprise veteran gardeners, who have experienced Minnesota's long-term winter warming trend.

"The good news is that it probably just improves people's success with a few more items," said Lew Gerten, a partner and general manager at the nursery and greenhouse operation of the same name in Inver Grove Heights.

[Javaman]

1. Here in Austin we are supposed to be zone 8b...

but since I have been planting to a zone 9, my stuff does a lot better.

Frankly, after last summer, I think we are hotter than a zone 9.