Zones for International Members

How may someone determine what USDA Zone fits a location outside of the US? I have several online friends from Australia and the UK, and wonder if there are similar zone maps for those countries. :)

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

The answer to that question on the UK part is yes there are maps but they are pretty meaningless and approximate. You can't equate USDA zones to an island climate in my honest opinion.

Here's a detailed winter temperature map for the UK and S. Ireland BUT it's not following USDA zones and is more accurate than any other I've seen before. We don't have zones here, too many variables in our climate for that and the map is still approximate. I don't know who did this map but it's not a standard government thing.
http://www.hardyexotics.co.uk/hardyexotics/frameset.htm

UK and S. Ireland is generally between USDA zone 7-9, here's a map for Europe
http://www.marblenet.es/pjse/mapuse.htm

Here's one for Australia
http://www.anbg.gov.au/hort.research/zones.html

This message was edited Jun 1, 2004 5:56 AM

Thank you, Baa! That's exactly what I was looking for, and all links are now bookmarked. :)

I have just joined Dave's Garden, and wanted to know what zone I am in. I found the following page which give the European hardiness guidelines, with the USA zones, and the Royal Horticultural Society zones of hardiness. Hope this is of help.
http://www.seedsite.co.uk/hardiness.html

Welcome to DG Jaybear (I'm in the UK too)

I couldn't get the link to work

Apologies to you Baa! My brain must have been disengaged when I wrote this-I have searched again and the link is
www.theseedsite.co.uk/hardiness.html
Again,many apologies for my error

Thanks Jaybear :)

Hello,
what about Germany ? would love to find out the Zone .
I will be grateful for any Information.
Thank You in Advance,
Brigitte

The second link on my first post will help with most european countries

How about Japan? I have a friend there who relies on me for gardning advice and I'd love to be able to tell her what will grow in her zone.

As far as I know there isn't an online USDA zone map for Japan. I understand from a friend who lives in Japan that it can be from zones 4/5 to 10/11, although, as I indicated above, these climate zones don't really help where you cannot be sure of the weather.

What about Panama, Central America? I figure it must be a zone 10 or 11. What do you think?

I would guess you're 10 or 11 as well, but since the USDA zones are based on lowest winter temperature if you know your typical minimum temperature in winter you can figure out for sure: Zone 10a has low temp of 30 (F), 10b is 35, and 11 is 40.

I am living in Antigua, West Indies and figure I am about 11 but not too sure?

Does your temperature at night in the winter ever go below 40 degrees F? If it doesn't then you're in zone 11. If you occasionally get below 40 but not lower than 35, then you're in 10b. Or you can go to this page http://davesgarden.com/zone/ and Dave's got a link to a site that has some zone maps for areas outside of North America. Not sure if they have the West Indies or not but it's worth looking.

Thanks ecrane3 I am definately an 11!