Growing Guide
How to know what plants will grow on your land
Sources: USDA SSURGO, USDA PHZM, USDA PLANTS, PRISM Climate Group, NOAA NCEI, USGS 3DEP, NREL NSRDB, EPA FRS
"What will grow here" is a multi-factor question. Most guides answer it with a checklist: look up your zone, do a soil test, walk the property at noon to note the sun, check for low spots. The checklist works — it has worked for a century of agronomy. It is also slow, requires real expertise to interpret, and stops short of synthesizing the answer.
The same factors are now mapped at the parcel scale in the public federal record. There is a faster path that does not skip any of the rigor.
Plants scored
1,112
USDA PLANTS database
Constraints checked
10 per plant
Compound model
Federal data
20+ federal data products
14 agencies
The factors that actually decide it
A plant has to clear all of these. Strong on one and weak on another is not "average" — it is a plant that struggles, because the weakest factor sets the ceiling.
- Climate. Hardiness zone (winter survival), growing-degree days (heat to ripen), chill hours (cold to break dormancy in fruit), and the length of the frost-free season.
- Soil. pH, texture, drainage class, organic matter, depth to a restrictive layer. From the USDA SSURGO survey.
- Sun and shade. Direct sun hours by season, computed from LiDAR terrain plus shading from buildings, trees, and neighbors.
- Water. Annual precipitation, season distribution, and drought frequency from PRISM 30-year climate normals.
- Microclimate. Slope, aspect, frost pockets, and the difference between "your weather station" and "your yard." Captured by terrain at sub-meter resolution where USGS 3DEP LiDAR is available.
- Existing ecology and contamination. What grows nearby already, and whether the EPA flags road, industrial, agricultural, or groundwater contamination within reach.
- Your goals. Vegetable garden, native pollinator habitat, fruit, lawn alternatives, food forest. The same parcel scores differently for different personas.
The DIY path, and where it stops
The standard advice — and it is good advice — is to assemble the picture yourself:
- Look up your USDA hardiness zone at planthardiness.ars.usda.gov.
- Order a soil test from your state Cooperative Extension.
- Walk the property at four times of day across a season; note where the sun lands and where water sits.
- Check your state Extension's variety trials and planting calendar.
- Cross-reference each candidate plant against soil pH, drainage, sun, and the season length you measured.
This works. It is also a full project for a homeowner — eight to twelve weeks of intermittent effort before you have a confident shortlist, and longer if you are new to the vocabulary. The places it falls short are integration (cross-referencing five factors against a thousand plants is tedious by hand) and contamination (most home growers never check the EPA record, and the EPA record is dense).
None of this means the DIY path is wrong. It means the synthesis is where the lift is, and the synthesis is what a platform can do well.
The data-driven path — same data, faster synthesis
Every layer in the DIY checklist exists as a public federal dataset, mapped to your address:
USDA SSURGO
Soil mapping unit: pH range, drainage class, texture, organic matter, depth to restrictive layer
USDA PHZM 2023
Hardiness zone, computed from 30 years of annual extreme minimum temperatures
PRISM Climate Group
Temperature, precipitation, vapor-pressure deficit at 800m resolution
NOAA NCEI
Last spring frost, first fall frost, growing-season length from 30-year normals
NREL NSRDB + USGS 3DEP
Direct sun hours by season, refined for terrain and structures from LiDAR
EPA FRS
Federal contamination sites — Superfund, brownfield, UST, TRI, mining, CAFO, nitrate, pesticide, PFAS
Growable Ground queries all of these for your address, scores 1,112 plants against the result, and shows you the matches. The free tier covers the search and the data; the paid view adds the full report, contamination intelligence per plant, and Gnorman — the assistant trained on your parcel. 14 days on us if you want to try the paid view; no card required to start.
None of this replaces a soil test from your Extension lab when you are about to spend money on amendments. SSURGO is a survey; a lab confirms the survey. The two are complements, not substitutes.
Find what will grow on your specific land
Drop an address; 1,112 plants matched against your soil, sun, climate, and contamination data.
25+ data sources analyzed in seconds
How to start (free)
- Enter your address at growableground.com. Anywhere in the US, including rural and unincorporated areas.
- The platform pulls the federal record for your parcel — SSURGO, PHZM, PRISM, NOAA, NREL, EPA — in a few seconds.
- You see your top-matched plants, each scored against the constraints that matter for that crop. Open any plant to see why it matched and which data points lifted or lowered the score.
- Pick a grower persona (vegetable, native, permaculture, container, salad, lawn and cover, flower farmer) to shift the weights toward what you want to grow.
- Save plants you want to try. The Garden Builder will place them on a map of your parcel when you are ready.
From there, two honest next steps: order a soil test from your state Cooperative Extension to confirm the SSURGO read, and trial a small first planting on the highest-scoring matches before scaling up.
Reliable starting points outside Growable Ground
- USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map — authoritative for winter-survival zone, updated 2023.
- USDA PLANTS Database — the federal plant taxonomy and distribution registry that underlies most credible plant tools.
- USDA NRCS Web Soil Survey — the public viewer for SSURGO. Free, deep, and a useful sanity check alongside any platform that reads SSURGO for you.
- USDA Cooperative Extension — find your state's land-grant Extension. Soil tests, variety trials, regional planting guides.
- Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — the deepest free native-plant database in North America.
- PRISM Climate Group (Oregon State) — the source for the gridded climate normals used here.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a soil test before I start?
Not to start. USDA SSURGO maps the dominant soil for nearly every acre in the lower 48, including pH range, drainage class, texture, and organic matter. Growable Ground reads SSURGO for your address automatically. A lab test from your state Extension is still worth doing before you spend money on amendments — it confirms what SSURGO predicts and catches local outliers SSURGO can miss.
What about microclimate — south-facing slopes, sheltered spots, urban heat?
The federal record captures the climate at the parcel scale (PRISM 800m) and the sun at the LiDAR scale (USGS 3DEP, sub-meter where it is available). That covers most of what people call microclimate. The very local stuff — a stone wall radiating heat, the lee of a building — is yours to layer on top once the platform has put the big factors in front of you.
Is this just for vegetable gardeners?
The 1,112 species database covers vegetables, fruit, herbs, native perennials, pollinator plants, ground covers, lawn grasses, and ornamentals. Growers pick a persona — vegetable, flower farmer, native, permaculture, container, salad, lawn and cover — and the scoring weights shift to match. The same parcel data underlies every persona.
Does it consider contamination?
Yes, and this is a real differentiator. The free tier shows you whether the EPA flags any federal contamination sources within reach of your address. Paid plans surface the per-pathway risk for each plant — road runoff, wind-borne deposition, and groundwater flow direction. Roughly 1.9M federal contamination sites are indexed.
How accurate is federal data at the parcel scale?
SSURGO maps soil at the field level — a few acres per polygon, sometimes finer. PRISM climate is 800m grid; PHZM hardiness is 800m too. NREL solar irradiance is 4km, refined to your parcel using USGS 3DEP LiDAR for sun-hour modeling where LiDAR coverage exists. The platform tells you the resolution of each layer it used so you know what to trust and where to ground-truth with a soil test or a season of growing.
Can I see the data sources for every plant recommendation?
Yes. Every plant page lists the constraints that pulled the score up or down, with the federal data source named on each — SSURGO, PHZM, PRISM, NOAA, NREL, EPA. Nothing is invented. The methodology page explains the scoring math end-to-end.
Find what will grow on your specific land
Drop an address; 1,112 plants matched against your soil, sun, and climate data.
25+ data sources analyzed in seconds