The Cross Timbers spans USDA hardiness zones 8a-8b — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
West of Fort Worth the ground flips: the Cross Timbers' sandy, well-drained, acidic post-oak savanna soils sit hard against the alkaline Blackland clay that begins just east of the metroplex — so two DFW gardens a few miles apart want opposite watering and amendment plans (fast-draining sand west, heavy moisture-holding clay east). This EPA Level III ecoregion (Cross Timbers) runs north-south through Tarrant, Parker, Wise, Jack, Palo Pinto, Hood, and Erath counties at Zone 8a-8b with a long ~250-290-day frost-free season. Growers here do well with okra, black-eyed pea, tomato, and jalapeno — with the usual caveat that any single yard's soil, sun, and drainage cast the deciding vote.
The Cross Timbers spans Texas.
Your yard isn't all of the Cross Timbers.
The Cross Timbers spans USDA zones 8a-8b, but your parcel sits in exactly one — and slope, tree cover, and low spots nudge it further. 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 Cross Timbers — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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The Cross Timbers — the short answer
The Cross Timbers: USDA zones 8a-8b, 249–292 frost-free days depending where in it you stand, in Texas.
- USDA zones
- 8a-8b
- USDA PHZM 2023, aggregated over the footprint
- Shortest season here
- 249 days
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020 — Parker County
- Counties
- 7
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Region type
- County cluster
- Growable Ground growing-region registry
Region boundary: Growable Ground growing-region registry — curated county clusters, EPA Level III ecoregions, and town clusters drawn finer than any county. The season figure is this region's own record, measured across its 7 member counties, not a state or national average.
Hardiness Zone Range
The Cross Timbers is not one growing season
One answer for the Cross Timbers averages 7 counties whose growing seasons are 43 days apart — from 249 frost-free days in Parker County to 292 in Tarrant County. That is the same region, measured the same way, in the same years. Which end of it your land sits nearer decides what finishes before the first hard freeze.
The middle half of 7 counties runs 260–270 days, with a median of 266 days — a 43-day span end to end.
Measured across 7 member counties, each carrying its own 28°F normal. NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020. A member with no own record is absent from the range rather than counted as zero — nothing here is interpolated to the region. Your own site sits somewhere inside this range; a parcel report resolves where.
Where the line runs inside the Cross Timbers
The middle half of the Cross Timbers runs 260–270 frost-free days, and 4 of its 7 counties sit outside that — 2 on the short side, 2 on the long. A regional planting date describes the middle well and the ends poorly, which is worth knowing before you follow one.
Under 260 frost-free days
2 counties
- Parker County · 249 days
- Jack County · 254 days
The end of the region that sets the planting calendar — start seed indoors here and the season stretches to meet the crop.
260–270 frost-free days
3 counties
0 of 3 shown
The middle half of the region, and the part a single regional season describes well.
Over 270 frost-free days
2 counties
- Tarrant County · 292 days
- Hood County · 273 days
Long enough for a second succession of a quick crop after the first comes out.
Each county is placed by its OWN 28°F frost-free normal (NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020), the same figure its own guide page publishes. Elevation, slope and cold-air drainage move a site within its county as well — which is the part only your address resolves.
What Grows in the Cross Timbers
All 5 of the plants below that publish a season requirement clear even Parker County’s 249 frost-free days — so on season alone, this grid works at both ends of the region. The 43-day spread still decides how far past this list you can push, and how early you can start.
Plants matched to the Cross Timbers' USDA zones 8a-8b, ordered by how much hardiness margin each has across the region — the ones with room to spare at both ends of this band lead. Each links to its full growing profile.
Native Plants of the Cross Timbers
Plants the USDA PLANTS Database documents as native and present in this region’s state, kept only where the published hardiness range meets the Cross Timbers’s USDA zones 8a-8b — closest range match first. Presence is recorded by state, so a plant can be documented across the state and still be scarce in your corner of the region.
The ground across the Cross Timbers
The USDA soil survey maps this ground county by county. These are those records weighted by land area across seven member counties — this region’s own profile, not a state figure.
The ground is predominantly Alfisols, at 50% of mapped acres, followed by Mollisols (30%), Vertisols (7%) and Entisols (6%). Six soil orders appear somewhere inside the footprint, which is the honest reason a regional soil answer only goes so far. The most extensive named soils are Windthorst, Aledo, and Shatruce.
79% of those acres are well drained, and another 18% moderately well drained, 1% somewhat excessively drained. Topsoil pH runs 6.5–8.1 between the lowest and the highest county on record. 23% of the footprint is classed prime farmland.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Well drained
Topsoil pH
6.5–8.1
Hydric soils
0%
Soil changes across a driveway, so which of these your own ground sits on is a parcel question rather than a regional one. Tarrant County holds the most wetland ground here, at 1% — soil types explained.
USDA NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access
What this means for growing in the Cross Timbers
The soil survey reads this ground county by county, and the readings above are those records summed across the Cross Timbers. Here is what they mean for a garden here — and the move an experienced grower makes about each one.
Drainage
From county records79% of the mapped acres across the Cross Timbers are well drained — ground that drains quickly. That is area-weighted across all seven of its mapped counties.
The upside is soil you can work early in spring and roots that never drown; the cost is that fast-draining ground dries out fast and leaches nutrients away before plants can use them.
Work in compost and mulch to hold moisture and feed, and water more often in short doses than deep and rarely.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
From county recordsTopsoil across the Cross Timbers runs pH 6.5–8.1 — near neutral in five of its seven counties.
This is the range most vegetables prefer — one correction you probably do not have to make, which is genuinely good news for a new bed.
Keep it there with compost rather than lime or sulfur, and only amend if your own soil test says otherwise.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across the Cross Timbers — and how to grow with it.
Across the Cross Timbers' 7 counties the federal record holds 6,271 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks (4,328), Brownfields (1,069) and Toxics Release Inventory (519). The heaviest single county is Tarrant County, with 4,999.
That is a regional count, not a reading of any one lot — proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis. Open the map outlined to the Cross Timbers to see which records sit where you actually grow.
Sources Checked
Summed across the 7 counties in the Cross Timbers
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around the Cross Timbers, two things run higher than the national average across the 7 counties in the Cross Timbers — CAFO (93 sites) and Toxics Release Inventory (519 sites). It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
CAFO: CAFOs pose a different contamination profile than chemical sources.
Toxics Release Inventory: TRI facilities report annual chemical releases to air, water, and land.
Wash all produce consumed raw thoroughly, especially leafy greens grown near CAFOs.
Check prevailing wind direction — downwind parcels face higher exposure than upwind or crosswind locations.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
Your land is one point inside the Cross Timbers
Everything above resolves to the Cross Timbers as a whole — a footprint whose own counties record seasons 43 days apart, and hardiness across zones 8a-8b. Your parcel sits at one point in that range, not in the middle of it. 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 region 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 regional average.
Your Lot vs the Cross Timbers Average
Cross Timbers Average
- ●USDA Zones 8a-8b, averaged across Cross Timbers
- ●One soil character for all of Cross Timbers
- ●State-average frost dates
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Cross Timbers' 8a-8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in the Cross Timbers
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in the Cross Timbers — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, contamination, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Cross Timbers averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Cross Timbers — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Cross Timbers average
How we know this about the Cross Timbers
The boundary: a cluster of neighboring counties. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one, and every figure on this page was measured over the counties inside it rather than borrowed from the state around it.
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, aggregated across the footprint; the growing season from NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS 1991–2020 28°F normals, read at each member’s own record; boundaries from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination record from the federal sources named in that beat above; the soil from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, read at each member county’s own record and weighted to this footprint by land area. Where a member carries no record of its own, it is absent from the figure rather than filled in.
Common questions about the Cross Timbers
What hardiness zone is the Cross Timbers?
The Cross Timbers spans USDA hardiness zones 8a-8b, aggregated from the USDA Agricultural Research Service Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 across the region's counties. Zones reflect average annual extreme minimum temperatures from 1991–2020 data.
How long is the growing season in the Cross Timbers?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, the Cross Timbers' counties mostly run 260 to 270 frost-free days, median 266 (NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991–2020, over 7 member counties). That 10-day spread is the honest read — no single season describes 7 counties, and each county guide below carries its own.
When does frost risk end in the Cross Timbers?
Across the Cross Timbers, the middle half of member counties see their last 28°F hard freeze between Feb 28 and Mar 7 (median Mar 3), and their first fall freeze between Nov 22 and Nov 25. Those are hard freezes, not the last light frost: tender transplants wait for about Mar 24, and elevation decides which end of a 7-day spread you garden in.
What grows well in the Cross Timbers?
The Cross Timbers' conditions suit plants such as Okra, Black-eyed Pea, Tomato, Jalapeno, Sweet Potato, Fig. What actually thrives on any one site still turns on its specific soil, sun, and drainage — we score each plant against the real conditions at your address.
How is the Cross Timbers defined?
The Cross Timbers is defined here as a curated cluster of 7 neighboring counties that share a growing character. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one — every county in it is named on this page.
Which states does the Cross Timbers cover?
The Cross Timbers spans Texas. Each state's full growing guide is linked on this page.
What other growing regions cover the same states?
High Plains, Piney Woods, Texas High Plains / Panhandle, Gulf Coast, Blackland Prairie, and Coastal Bend share at least one state with the Cross Timbers. Growing regions overlap and interlock — a single address can sit inside more than one, which is why the precise read is always the parcel, not the region.
What this page reads at the Cross Timbers’s own scale
6 of the readings below were taken at the Cross Timbers' own scale — the zone 8a-8b band across its footprint, a median 266-day season across its 7 counties and 6,271 documented federal contamination records across its 7 counties, 4,999 of them in Tarrant County alone; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The USDA hardiness band 8a-8b aggregated across all 7 counties in the footprintUSDA PHZM 2023
- The boundary itself — the 7 counties this region is curated fromGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The growing character that makes this region distinct from the states it crossesGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The 28°F season across the footprint — the middle half of its 7 counties run 260 to 270 frost-free days, median 266NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- The federal contamination record over the whole footprint — 6,271 documented federal contamination records across its 7 counties, 4,999 of them in Tarrant County aloneEPA, USGS and USDA federal site records
- The soil order mix across the footprint — 50% Alfisols, topsoil pH 6.5–8.1, area-weighted across its 7 mapped countiesUSDA NRCS SSURGO
Inherited from a wider read
- The candidate plant list — its state's curated sets, merged and filtered to zones 8a-8bfrom Texas
What this page can’t tell you
- Which end of the 10-day range your ground sits at — 260 days at one extreme, 270 at the other, decided mostly by elevationfrost dates explained →
- Which of those soils your own ground sits on — the survey maps them county-wide, and they change across a drivewaysoil types explained →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on one specific lotwhy one lot differs from the next →
Explore the Cross Timbers
State growing guides
Counties in this region
Other growing regions across Texas
A semi-arid shortgrass tableland of deep soils and big sky, where wind, low rainfall, and irrigation shape dryland wheat, sorghum, and resilient gardens.
The sandy, acidic pine-and-hardwood forest belt of East Texas and western Louisiana — the humid South Central Plains, where a long frost-free season of roughly nine months favors heat- and acid-tolerant Southern gardens.
The southern, warmer anchor of the High Plains — the Llano Estacado tableland west of the Caprock Escarpment, where a longer season (frost-free days run near 227 across the Texas counties, well above the multi-state High Plains average) and deep-well Ogallala irrigation define the growing reality. This is the largest contiguous cotton patch in the world around Lubbock (Texas Co-op Power), and, west of the Caprock, the Texas High Plains AVA (TTB, 27 CFR 9.144) that grows roughly 80% of the state's wine grapes. High, flat, and semi-arid: what grows here is what deep-well water and a zone 7a-8a season can coax from it, a distinctly Texan story rather than the dryland wheat and sorghum of the northern High Plains.
The humid, near-frost-free coastal rim of the Gulf of Mexico — long seasons, sandy and alluvial soils, heat, and hurricanes shaping what thrives. (Representative coastal counties, not exhaustive.)
Here the soil, not the zone, defines the garden. The Blackland Prairie is a narrow black-clay belt tracing the I-35 corridor from Sherman through Dallas, Waco, and Temple down to Austin — built on vertisol "black gumbo" that swells sticky when wet, then cracks open as it dries. That shrink-swell clay is alkaline and slow-draining, so where the sandy acid soils of the Piney Woods to the east or the thin limestone of the Hill Country to the west let many gardeners plant straight in the ground, growers here reach for raised beds, gypsum, and heavy organic amendment first. The season runs long — commonly 264 to 300 frost-free days across zones 8a to 9a — but it's the black clay, not the calendar, your beds have to answer to.
The 11 counties of Texas's Coastal Bend, anchored on Corpus Christi and the Nueces estuary, span USDA hardiness zones 9a to 10a with frost-free seasons running 311 to 343 days.