Ashland Oregon: USDA Hardiness Zones

Choosing the right plant and planting it in the right spot in your garden is a difficult decision, but you can be assured you are buying the right plant suited for your garden by checking the hardiness zone on its label. By buying plants rated for your hardiness zone you’ve increased the plant’s survival rate and its ability to thrive in your garden.

This is true for vegetable seeds too. Each seed packet has the plant’s hardiness zone printed on the back.

Ashland has 3 hardiness zones: 7b, 8a, 8b. Check your zone by location here: https://www.plantmaps.com/en/us/f/hz/state/oregon/plant-hardiness-zones

Also, be ware that nurseries and stores sell plants that are not rated for the climate where they are being sold.

Just say NO to Fall Clean Up

While diseased plants and leaves should be removed from your flowerbeds,  leaving plant debris, seed heads, plant stalks, and leaf litter provides much needed winter shelters and food for beneficial insects and birds. 

Forging urban birds like juncos, sparrows and chickadees need your plant’s seeds for food, and beneficial insects, like butterflies and moths, winter over on flower and ornamental grass stalks. So, by cutting and cleaning out flowerbed debris you are doing more harm than good by disrupting your garden’s natural habitat.

Rethink fall clean up, resist the urge to remove all the debris, keep it until spring because the wildlife depends on it! It also provides mulch to protect plants during cold weather. 

Carlotta Lucas, AGC Member  

Photo by: Carlotta Lucas – Caterpillar on Salvia Stalk (10/22/2020)