Whats the Tucson planting zone?
It’s Zone 9 if you go by the United State Department of Agriculture or Zone 12 if you use the Sunset Western Garden Book. What’s this mean? These zones give you an idea of the average cold temperatures for the area. This in turn gives you an idea of which plants can grow in the Tucson under normal growing conditions. Sunset Magazine has added a few guidelines, including high temperature, for their zone description which can be found in their very popular garden book and monthly publication. With the added guidelines the Sunset zone guides are popular in Tucson and the rest of the Western states. Garden catalogs on the other hand will be more apt to use the USDA zone guide. Keep in mind these are guidelines and low temperatures can vary around Tucson on any given night because of the variation in altitude and micro-climates.
