Desert View Highlands, California, sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
Reliable performers under these conditions include artichoke, fig, california poppy, and cabbage; what your own ground favors still comes down to its soil, sun, and drainage.
Even in Desert View Highlands, no two yards are alike.
A low spot, a south-facing slope, or a stand of trees moves the frost date and sun across a single Desert View Highlands lot. Enter your address and we'll score 1,086 plants against your land's actual soil, sun, and frost.
We read public map data around Desert View Highlands — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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Desert View Highlands — the short answer
Desert View Highlands, California: USDA zone 9a, about 295 days between hard freezes, across 282 acres of town.
- USDA zone
- 9a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 13
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 5
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~295
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Town area
- 282 acres
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
Every figure names the dataset it came from. Hard-freeze dates are this town’s own 28°F normals: light frosts run a few weeks past them, and tender transplants usually wait 2–3 weeks after the last hard freeze.
Hardiness Zone Range
Zone 9a is Desert View Highlands's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Desert View Highlands's 295-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in Desert View Highlands
Each reading below is measured for Desert View Highlands itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredDesert View Highlands runs about 295 days between hard freezes — close to year-round growing.
Frost is rarely the limit here; winter plantings are as real as summer ones, and the harder question is which crops shrug off the summer heat.
Grow cool-season crops through the mild winter, and choose heat-tolerant varieties for the summer beds.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredDesert View Highlands sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a.
The zone sets which perennials, shrubs, and fruit trees live through an average winter here — a plant rated for a colder zone is a safe bet, one rated warmer needs winter protection or gets treated as an annual.
Match perennials and fruit to the zone before you buy, so nothing you plant is a gamble against the cold.
USDA PHZM 2023
The kind of country Desert View Highlands is in
Desert View Highlands sits in the Mojave Basin and Range — EPA Level III, inside the wider North American Deserts. That is read at Desert View Highlands's own centroid, and it is not what its county reads: Los Angeles County is mostly Southern California/Northern Baja Coast. The wider page above you is answering a different question about different ground.
What Grows in Desert View Highlands
Every plant below cleared Desert View Highlands's own zone 9a and its 295-day season. Each card opens that plant's California profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in Desert View Highlands?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. Cool-season crops can go in from around Jan 16; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 13 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 5 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. With almost year-round growing weather, timing is about heat and rainfall more than frost — some bench is always in play.
What's on the federal record near Desert View Highlands
Closest first, within ~10 miles of Desert View Highlands. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- 38996 PALM TREE WAYBrownfields · 500 ft
- 38833 JUNIPER TREE ROADBrownfields · 750 ft
- NORMAN & MARY RENFROWBrownfields · 750 ft
- REASOR, CHARLENEBrownfields · 1400 ft
- SMILECARE FAMILY DENTISTRY #64Brownfields · 1900 ft
- TESORO (USA) 68185Underground Storage Tanks · 1900 ft
- TESORO WEST COAST COMPANY LLC NO 68185Brownfields · 2000 ft
- MOLLER INVESTMENT GROUP INCBrownfields · 2000 ft
- TESORO (SPEEDWAY) 62547Underground Storage Tanks · 2100 ft
- OASIS SURGERY CENTERBrownfields · 2100 ft
- POSADA DENTALBrownfields · 2100 ft
- 006N012W21G001SNitrate · 2100 ft
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Desert View Highlands's center, not your beds. Run your own address for what's upwind of you specifically.
Environmental Intelligence
The counts behind that headline — every source type on the record near Desert View Highlands.
Total Sites
1,462
within ~10 miles of Desert View Highlands
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed)
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of Desert View Highlands
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of Desert View Highlands
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Desert View Highlands, Brownfields runs higher than the national average — 1,046 sites within ~10 miles of Desert View Highlands. It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
Brownfields: Brownfield sites are former commercial or industrial properties where legacy soil contamination (heavy metals, PAHs, petroleum compounds) may persist.
Check EPA brownfield remediation status — many sites have completed cleanup with institutional controls.
Check your specific parcel in Desert View Highlands
Get exact proximity distances to contamination sources for your specific parcel — plus soil, sun, drainage, and 1,086 plant recommendations.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Desert View Highlands average
Your land is one point inside Desert View Highlands
Everything above resolves to Desert View Highlands as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 282 acres. Your parcel is one point inside that footprint. Slope, tree cover, a low spot that pools cold air, and what is in the soil are all resolved at the address, and none of them are visible at town scale. That is the honest boundary of this page, and the reason the next step is a reading of your own ground rather than a better local average.
Your Lot vs the Desert View Highlands Average
Desert View Highlands Average
- ●USDA Zones 9a, averaged across Desert View Highlands
- ●One soil character for all of Desert View Highlands
- ●Frost dates read at Desert View Highlands's scale: Feb 13 to Dec 5
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Desert View Highlands's 9a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in Desert View Highlands
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Desert View Highlands, California — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Desert View Highlands averages can't show:
We read public map data around Desert View Highlands — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Desert View Highlands average
How we know this about Desert View Highlands
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, read at this town’s own centroid; hard-freeze dates from NOAA 1991–2020 28°F normals at Desert View Highlands’s own record; boundaries and acreage from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination records from the federal sources named in their beats above. Soil is not read at town grain anywhere on this page — there is no town-resolution survey in our data, which is why you will find no soil grid here rather than a statewide one wearing a local label. The resolution ledger below names every figure this page inherited.
Common questions about Desert View Highlands
When does frost risk typically end in Desert View Highlands?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Desert View Highlands typically lands around Feb 13, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — earlier than the light-frost dates most charts quote. That marks the hard freeze, not the last light frost — lighter frosts keep biting past it, which is why tender transplants here wait until about Mar 6.
When is the first frost in Desert View Highlands?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in Desert View Highlands typically arrives around Dec 5, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Nov 21, so the watching starts about Nov 5 — about 295 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in Desert View Highlands?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Desert View Highlands sees about 295 frost-free days — roughly Feb 13 through Dec 5, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 6 to Nov 21, about 260 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Desert View Highlands?
The federal record around Desert View Highlands is a meaningful one — 1,462 documented sites, mostly Brownfields entries (1,046), the nearest Brownfields record under a tenth of a mile out — so a soil test before new food beds is a sensible precaution here, not a reason to hold back from growing. Remember that proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what sits where.
How do I protect my plants from frost in Desert View Highlands?
From about Nov 5 the job here turns from planting to protecting — the last start even a 30-day crop can finish. As the season closes around the first 28°F hard freeze near Dec 5 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals), three moves buy time: row cover or an old sheet over tender plants on still, clear nights; water the soil the afternoon before a freeze, so it holds warmth overnight; and harvest tomatoes, peppers and basil before Dec 5. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at Desert View Highlands's scale — its 9a band and its 295-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Desert View Highlands's numbers: we read soil, sun, drainage and frost at your exact address. Try it for 14 days — no card required.
What this page reads at Desert View Highlands’s own scale
6 of the readings below were taken at Desert View Highlands's own scale — its own ~295-day season between 28°F freezes, the 282 acres it covers and 1,462 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Desert View Highlands's own USDA hardiness band, zones 9aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Desert View Highlands's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Feb 13 and Dec 5 and the ~295-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 1,462 documented contamination sites on the federal record near Desert View Highlands, the closest Brownfields record under a tenth of a mile out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- Desert View Highlands's boundary and the 282 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 9a and a ~295-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Desert View Highlands sits in the Mojave Basin and Range — not the ecoregion its county mostly readsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so Desert View Highlands's 282 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Los Angeles County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Los Angeles County
- The growing challenges every California grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom California
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Los Angeles County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Desert View Highlands's 282 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of Desert View Highlands you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 282 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Brownfields record under a tenth of a mile out, measured from the town centrehow we read the record →
- Where cold air settles, which slopes face the sun, and which way the wind runs on your own ground — measured at your address, and averaged away by any Desert View Highlands-wide figureread your own land →