The Hills, New Jersey, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6b — a band that supports both cool-season staples and warm-season crops chosen to fit the local frost window.
Among the crops suited to this profile: cabbage, hazelnut, lavender, and collard greens. The site-level story — soil, sun, drainage — decides the rest.
Even in The Hills, 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 The Hills 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 The Hills — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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The Hills — the short answer
The Hills, New Jersey: USDA zone 6b, about 204 days between hard freezes, across 2K acres of town.
- USDA zone
- 6b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 9
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 30
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~204
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Town area
- 2K 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 6b is The Hills's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against The Hills's 204-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in The Hills
Each reading below is measured for The Hills itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredThe Hills runs about 204 days between hard freezes — a long growing season.
There is slack for succession plantings and slow-finishing crops: many vegetables can be sown twice, and the heat-lovers have time to ripen fully.
Plan a second sowing of quick crops after the first comes out, and use the fall window most gardeners let sit idle.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredThe Hills sits in USDA hardiness zone 6b.
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 The Hills is in
The Hills sits in the Northern Piedmont — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. That is read at The Hills's own centroid rather than borrowed from Somerset County.
What Grows in The Hills
Every plant below cleared The Hills's own zone 6b and its 204-day season. Each card opens that plant's New Jersey profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in The Hills?
Too late for some crops, right on time for others — a growing season is a sequence, not a deadline. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 12; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 9 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 30 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. There is slack in a calendar like this — late plantings, second rounds of favorites, and a fall bench that keeps beds working.
Documented around The Hills
Spotted lanternfly documented 2 miles from The Hills, first recorded 2019. What to watch for.
What's on the federal record near The Hills
Closest first, within ~10 miles of The Hills. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- WALGREENS 19955Brownfields · 700 ft
- MOUNT PROSPECT BOOSTER STATIONUnderground Storage Tanks · 2400 ft
- SEAL-SPOUT CORPUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.7 mi
- Hoffman ProspectMining · 1.0 mi
- EDC SCHLEY MTN RD PUMP STATIONUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- TIGER CLAW INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- Hoffman Copper MineMining · 1.1 mi
- AT&T COMMUNICATIONSUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- BEDMINSTER MAINTENANCE YARDUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- BELL ATLANTIC - BEDMINSTERUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- GULF SERVICE STATION #61905 FORMERUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- BEDMINSTER ONEUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from The Hills'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 The Hills.
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of The Hills
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of The Hills
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around The Hills, Superfund runs higher than the national average — 51 sites within ~10 miles of The Hills. It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
Superfund: Superfund sites represent the most severe contamination in the federal system.
Commission professional soil testing before any food production (test for heavy metals, VOCs, and SVOCs).
Check your specific parcel in The Hills
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 Hills average
Your land is one point inside The Hills
Everything above resolves to The Hills as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 2K 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 The Hills Average
The Hills Average
- ●USDA Zones 6b, averaged across The Hills
- ●One soil character for all of The Hills
- ●Frost dates read at The Hills's scale: Apr 9 to Oct 30
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not The Hills's 6b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in The Hills
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in The Hills, New Jersey — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Hills averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Hills — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Hills average
How we know this about The Hills
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 The Hills’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 The Hills
When does frost risk typically end in The Hills?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in The Hills typically lands around Apr 9, 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 Apr 30.
When is the first frost in The Hills?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in The Hills typically arrives around Oct 30, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Oct 16, so the watching starts about Sep 30 — about 204 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in The Hills?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, The Hills sees about 204 frost-free days — roughly Apr 9 through Oct 30, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 30 to Oct 16, about 169 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in The Hills?
The federal record around The Hills runs heavier than most — 1,496 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (874), the nearest Brownfields record about 0.1 miles out — so test the soil before planting food in the ground, and raised beds with clean imported soil grow well in the meantime. Even here, proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what's recorded and where.
How do I protect my plants from frost in The Hills?
From about Sep 30 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 Oct 30 (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 Oct 30. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at The Hills's scale — its 6b band and its 204-day season. Your yard writes its own version of The Hills'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 The Hills’s own scale
7 of the readings below were taken at The Hills's own scale — its own ~204-day season between 28°F freezes, the 1,814 acres it covers and 1,496 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The Hills's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6bUSDA PHZM 2023
- The Hills's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Apr 9 and Oct 30 and the ~204-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 1,496 documented contamination sites on the federal record near The Hills, the closest Brownfields record about 0.1 miles out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- The Hills's boundary and the 1,814 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6b and a ~204-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at The Hills's own centroid, the Northern PiedmontUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- A documented spotted-lanternfly record within reach of The Hillslydemapr (De Bona & Helmus), 10 km survey lattice
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so The Hills's 1,814 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Somerset County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Somerset County
- The growing challenges every New Jersey grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom New Jersey
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Somerset County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among The Hills's 1,814 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of The Hills you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 1,814 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Brownfields record about 0.1 miles 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 The Hills-wide figureread your own land →
More in New Jersey
Wider growing context
What grows across New JerseyThe Hills sits outside our named growing regions, so New Jersey as a whole is its closest context here.
Nearby growing guides