Can I Plant It answers a question every gardener who reads widely runs into sooner or later: a book from the UK says a plant is "RHS H4", a catalogue from the US says "USDA zone 7–9", an Australian nursery quotes an ANBG zone — and none of those tell you whether the plant will grow where you actually live.
Why zone systems don't translate
Hardiness zone systems are not equivalent, and converting between them is not as simple as lining up temperature bands. The USDA system measures one thing only: average winter minimum temperature. The RHS system rates the plant rather than the place. The Australian ANBG system nominally uses winter minimums, but in most of Australia cold is rarely the factor that actually kills a plant — heat, humidity, and drought matter more. The Canadian system uses seven separate climate variables.
There's also a directional difference that almost nothing explains. USDA-style zones say "this plant tolerates conditions down to zone X." RHS ratings say "this plant needs at least this much cold tolerance." Those are different claims, and reading one as the other leads to dead plants. Making that difference visible is the whole reason this site exists.
What the site does
The zone finder asks seven questions about your local conditions — winter cold, frost, summer heat, humidity, rainfall pattern, coastal influence, and growing season — and gives you your equivalent rating in all four systems, with caveats specific to your answers. The cross-check tool takes any rating you've found in a book, catalogue, or plant label and tells you how it stacks up against your conditions. The plant database holds around nine hundred plants with ratings in all four systems, and the plant season chart shows how a selection of plants moves through the year.
An Australian starting point
The site was built from an Australian gardener's perspective. Australian native plants and ANBG zone data are under-represented in plant databases generally, so they get deliberate priority here — though the tools work for any temperate-climate gardener in either hemisphere.
Who's behind this
Hi, I'm Jimmy, a home gardener and the creator of this site. I've always been drawn to plants that do more than look beautiful — the ones that nourish people, support healing, restore soil, or help the environment around them. Whether it's nutrient-dense edibles, medicinal herbs, or tough native species, I enjoy discovering and sharing what actually works in real gardens.
After years of researching plants from different countries and climates, I got tired of jumping between dozens of tabs and hardiness zone maps every time I wanted to try something new. I wanted one clean, reliable place to check what I could realistically grow — and to keep useful references in the same spot. So I built Can I Plant It.
I hold a Bachelor of Applied Science in Natural Systems and Wildlife Management and have studied permaculture design and aquaponics. These days I spend most of my spare time reading gardening books from different cultures, testing plants in my own space, and digging into climate-adapted growing techniques. I'm constantly learning, and happy to share what I discover along the way.
This site is genuinely a work in progress and I'm slowly improving and expanding it as I go. Thanks for stopping by — whether you're hunting for the perfect edible, a healing herb for your climate, or just curious about what you can plant this season, I hope this becomes a useful tool in your gardening journey.
Privacy
There are no accounts and no tracking by the site itself. If you save your zone profile, it's stored in your own browser and never sent anywhere. The full details are in the privacy policy.
Contact
Found a plant with wrong data, or a zone conversion that doesn't match your experience? Email [email protected] — corrections from gardeners who actually grow these plants are the most valuable input this site can get.