Zones

Is it possible to plant a zone 7 plant in zone 8?
The range is that 7 is as far south as it can be planted.
I am referring to a Thuja Filiformis by the way.
thanks,
Lauren

I imagine you'll probably be OK, just maybe put it in a little bit shadier spot than it would go in a cooler summer climate. The zones are much more reliable when thinking about winter hardiness (since that's how they were designed) so I don't trust them that much on the summer end of things. Generally what you do is if there's a plant that says it needs full sun but it's only supposed to go to zone 7 and you're in zone 8, then you would plant it somewhere that it will get some shade during the hottest part of the afternoon and it should be OK.

Okay thanks.
I will see how much sun the area gets but I think that might work.
Unfortunately I am not sure right away if it gets sun the 1st part of the day
or later in the day.
If it is full sun late afternoon it may not work if I am understanding right.
Lauren

It's really hard to say--as I said I don't really trust the zones for predicting summer stuff, I doubt that your summer highs are that much worse than what you'd see in zone 7b, in which case it might be OK. I did look the plant up and found it on Wayside Gardens website listed as part shade to full sun, which suggests to me that it'll be happier if you can keep it out of the sun during the hottest part of the day.

I also found another site that lists that it will do OK in AHS Heat Zones 2-9, this is an alternate system that was developed to take into account for the fact that not everywhere in the same zone has the same summer highs (the USDA zones are based only on winter low temperatures, they don't factor in summer temperatures at all). Looking at the heat zone map, most of North Carolina is in heat zone 7 or 8, which means you should be OK, although I still think providing some shade during the hottest part of the afternoon would probably be ideal.

Here's a link to the map, it's a pdf file so I'm not sure if you'll be able to open it or not (and if you're on dialup, it'll be very slow to open) This is a nice additional thing to look at, unfortunately it's often hard to find the heat zone rating on plants since it's not as widely used.
http://www.ahs.org/pdfs/05_heat_map.pdf

If you get really hot summers, choose a slight shaded area and add lots of compost etc to the soil so this will help retain some moisture, even though these plants can grow in a dryish area, if you get really hot spels in summer, the plants dont like to dehydrate too quickly or you will get lots of brown patches on the leaves, good luck. WeeNel.

Thank you both so much for your feedback!
I will report back how it goes:-)
Lauren