let’s talk US growing zones
One thing that’s absolutely important to know if you’re interested in growing plants is what USDA growing zone you live in. This will give you a range of average lowest temperatures in your region.
Plants at the garden center are usually labelled with a range of zones they can survive in. If there’s no range listed, the plant is probably not hardy in your area and will die in fall/winter.
An annual plant is one that either completes its life cycle in one growing season or is from a warmer zone and is treated as an annual, dying when cold weather returns. A perennial is a plant that can live more than one year and survive the winter. Herbaceous perennials die back to the ground, and woody perennials, like trees and shrubs, go dormant or mostly dormant.
In places without significant winter cold, dormancy and zones can get a bit more complicated and periods of drought vs. rain also play a role, but that’s not my area of experience so I’ll let someone else talk about that.
Your growing zone doesn’t change year to year, but there can be years of unseasonably low or high temperatures, and there are pockets of microclimates and grey areas where conditions may be different depending on where you live even within a neighborhood. Things are usually a bit warmer along bodies of water and in areas more sheltered from the wind and elements.
Zones are never a hard and fast rule, as adverse conditions can lead to any plant’s death, even if they’re technically hardy. Growing a plant in a pot over winter, for example, significantly lowers its cold tolerance. A plant that can survive low temperatures may still not survive wet soil, road salt, or harsh winds.
If the top map is horrendous to read, there is also an interactive one and ones for each individual state here:
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