The Monadnock Region spans USDA hardiness zone 5b — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
Southwestern New Hampshire around Mount Monadnock and the hub city of Keene — cold zone-5b winters and a roughly 170-day growing season across the hills of Cheshire County. Growers here do well with potato, apple, sugar maple, and blueberry — with the usual caveat that any single yard's soil, sun, and drainage cast the deciding vote.
The Monadnock Region spans New Hampshire.
Your yard isn't all of the Monadnock Region.
The Monadnock Region spans USDA zones 5b, 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 The Monadnock Region — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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The Monadnock Region — the short answer
The Monadnock Region: USDA zones 5b, 169 frost-free days, in New Hampshire.
- USDA zones
- 5b
- USDA PHZM 2023, aggregated over the footprint
- Frost-free season
- 169 days
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991–2020
- Counties
- 1
- 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. Where a region publishes no measured season, no season figure is shown.
Hardiness Zone Range
What Grows in the Monadnock Region
Plants matched to the Monadnock Region's USDA zones 5b, 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 Monadnock Region
Plants the USDA PLANTS Database documents as native and present in this region’s state, kept only where the published hardiness range meets the Monadnock Region’s USDA zones 5b — 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 Monadnock Region
The USDA soil survey maps this ground county by county. These are those records weighted by land area across one member county — this region’s own profile, not a state figure.
The ground is predominantly Spodosols, at 66% of mapped acres, followed by Inceptisols (25%), Entisols (5%) and Histosols (5%). The most extensive named soils are Marlow, Tunbridge, and Berkshire.
62% of those acres are well drained, and another 10% somewhat excessively drained, 8% moderately well drained. Topsoil pH runs 4.6–5.3 in that county’s own record. 4% of the footprint is classed prime farmland.
Soil order
Spodosols
Drainage
Well drained
Topsoil pH
4.6–5.3
Hydric soils
11%
Soil changes across a driveway, so which of these your own ground sits on is a parcel question rather than a regional one. soil types explained.
USDA NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access
What this means for growing in the Monadnock Region
The soil survey reads this ground county by county, and the readings above are those records summed across the Monadnock Region. Here is what they mean for a garden here — and the move an experienced grower makes about each one.
Drainage
From county records62% of the mapped acres across the Monadnock Region are well drained — ground that drains quickly. That is area-weighted across its one mapped county.
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 Monadnock Region runs pH 4.6–5.3 — acidic in the one record covering it.
Blueberries, potatoes, and rhododendrons thrive in it, but most vegetables start locking out nutrients below about pH 6.0 and grow pale and stunted no matter how much you feed them.
A measured lime application raises pH for the crops that need it — but test first, because the right rate depends on your own soil, not the county average.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across the Monadnock Region — and how to grow with it.
Across the Monadnock Region's 1 county the federal record holds 590 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks (320), Brownfields (137) and Nitrate (94). The heaviest single county is Cheshire County, with 590.
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 Monadnock Region to see which records sit where you actually grow.
Sources Checked
Summed across the county in the Monadnock Region
Know Before You Grow
- •Underground tanks leak petroleum as they age — near a former filling station, test the soil.
- •Near a brownfield, raised beds of imported soil give your food clean ground.
- •On a private well, test for nitrates: above 10 mg/L the water needs treatment before irrigating.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
Your land is one point inside the Monadnock Region
Everything above resolves to the Monadnock Region as a whole — a footprint spanning USDA zones 5b. Your parcel sits in exactly one of them. 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 Monadnock Region Average
Monadnock Region Average
- ●USDA Zones 5b, averaged across Monadnock Region
- ●One soil character for all of Monadnock Region
- ●State-average frost dates
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Monadnock Region's 5b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in the Monadnock Region
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in the Monadnock Region — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, contamination, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Monadnock Region averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Monadnock Region — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Monadnock Region average
How we know this about the Monadnock Region
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 Monadnock Region
What hardiness zone is the Monadnock Region?
The Monadnock Region spans USDA hardiness zones 5b, 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.
What grows well in the Monadnock Region?
The Monadnock Region's conditions suit plants such as Potato, Apple, Sugar Maple, Blueberry, Lilac. 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 Monadnock Region defined?
The Monadnock Region is defined here as a curated cluster of 1 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 Monadnock Region cover?
The Monadnock Region spans New Hampshire. Each state's full growing guide is linked on this page.
What other growing regions cover the same states?
The Upper Valley, White Mountains, The Lakes Region, Merrimack Valley, and New Hampshire Seacoast share at least one state with the Monadnock Region. 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 Monadnock Region’s own scale
5 of the readings below were taken at the Monadnock Region's own scale — the zone 5b band across its footprint and 590 documented federal contamination records across its one county, 590 of them in Cheshire County alone; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The USDA hardiness band 5b aggregated across the footprint's one countyUSDA PHZM 2023
- The boundary itself — the 1 county 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 federal contamination record over the whole footprint — 590 documented federal contamination records across its one county, 590 of them in Cheshire County aloneEPA, USGS and USDA federal site records
- The soil order mix across the footprint — 66% Spodosols, topsoil pH 4.6–5.3, area-weighted across its one mapped countyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
Inherited from a wider read
- The candidate plant list — its state's curated sets, merged and filtered to zones 5bfrom New Hampshire
What this page can’t tell you
- Frost dates — they swing too far across a footprint this size to quote as one regional numberfrost 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 Monadnock Region
State growing guides
Counties in this region
Other growing regions across New Hampshire
The Connecticut River's bi-state trench from Windsor to Hanover — 5a-5b valley-floor ground on both banks, warmer than the hills that rise from it, and a single growing community that has always ignored the state line.
Spanning Coos, Grafton, and Carroll counties, the White Mountains carry one of New Hampshire's shortest growing seasons — from 145 frost-free days in Coos County up to 162 in Grafton — across USDA hardiness zones 4b to 5b.
Winnipesaukee's tempering water gives the Lakes Region towns a solid 5b band and 174-191 measured frost-free days — noticeably gentler than the White Mountain country that begins one county north.
New Hampshire's Merrimack River corridor — Concord down through Manchester and Nashua — where the valley floor runs a shade milder (zone 6a at its southern end) than the 5b hills around it, buying growers a little more frost-free room than the uplands nearby.
New Hampshire's Seacoast — Rockingham and Strafford counties — sits in USDA zone 6a and posts the state's two longest frost-free seasons, about 187 to 188 days, roughly two weeks more than the Concord-area interior (Merrimack County, 173 days).