Gordon Heights, New York, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
These conditions suit cabbage, prickly pear, california poppy, and collard greens — a starting list any specific site will trim or extend with its own soil, sun, and drainage.
Even in Gordon Heights, 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 Gordon Heights 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 Gordon Heights — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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Gordon Heights — the short answer
Gordon Heights, New York: USDA zone 7b, about 232 days between hard freezes, across 1K acres of town.
- USDA zone
- 7b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 15
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~232
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Town area
- 1K 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 7b is Gordon Heights's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Gordon Heights's 232-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in Gordon Heights
Each reading below is measured for Gordon Heights itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredGordon Heights runs about 232 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
MeasuredGordon Heights sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b.
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 Gordon Heights is in
Gordon Heights sits in the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. That is read at Gordon Heights's own centroid rather than borrowed from Suffolk County.
What Grows in Gordon Heights
Every plant below cleared Gordon Heights's own zone 7b and its 232-day season. Each card opens that plant's New York profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in Gordon Heights?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. Cool-season crops can go in from around Feb 28; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 28 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 15 — 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 Gordon Heights
Spotted lanternfly documented 3 miles from Gordon Heights, first recorded 2023. What to watch for.
What's on the federal record near Gordon Heights
Closest first, within ~10 miles of Gordon Heights. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- S 45838. 1Nitrate · 0.5 mi
- AMERICAN HAZARDOUS MATERIALS MGMTBrownfields · 1.0 mi
- S 66506. 1Nitrate · 1.1 mi
- NATURES VALUE INCBrownfields · 1.2 mi
- WIEDENBACH COBrownfields · 1.2 mi
- HOMESTEAD VILLAGE APARTMENTS CO STERLING MGMTBrownfields · 1.2 mi
- ELSIE OWENS NORTH BROOKHAVEN HEALTH CTRBrownfields · 1.3 mi
- MIDDLE COUNTRY CLEANERSBrownfields · 1.3 mi
- S 23828. 1Nitrate · 1.4 mi
- S 23827. 1Nitrate · 1.4 mi
- HALE & LYNCH FUNERAL HOME INCBrownfields · 1.5 mi
- S 47725. 1Nitrate · 1.5 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Gordon Heights'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 Gordon Heights.
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of Gordon Heights
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of Gordon Heights
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Gordon Heights, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 1,256 sites within ~10 miles of Gordon Heights. Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Check your specific parcel in Gordon Heights
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 Gordon Heights average
Your land is one point inside Gordon Heights
Everything above resolves to Gordon Heights as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 1K 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 Gordon Heights Average
Gordon Heights Average
- ●USDA Zones 7b, averaged across Gordon Heights
- ●One soil character for all of Gordon Heights
- ●Frost dates read at Gordon Heights's scale: Mar 28 to Nov 15
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Gordon Heights's 7b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in Gordon Heights
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Gordon Heights, New York — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Gordon Heights averages can't show:
We read public map data around Gordon Heights — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Gordon Heights average
How we know this about Gordon Heights
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 Gordon Heights’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 Gordon Heights
When does frost risk typically end in Gordon Heights?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Gordon Heights typically lands around Mar 28, 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 18.
When is the first frost in Gordon Heights?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in Gordon Heights typically arrives around Nov 15, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Nov 1, so the watching starts about Oct 16 — about 232 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in Gordon Heights?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Gordon Heights sees about 232 frost-free days — roughly Mar 28 through Nov 15, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 18 to Nov 1, about 197 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Gordon Heights?
The federal record around Gordon Heights runs heavier than most — 2,183 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (1,256), the nearest Nitrate record about 0.5 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 Gordon Heights?
From about Oct 16 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 Nov 15 (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 Nov 15. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at Gordon Heights's scale — its 7b band and its 232-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Gordon Heights'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 Gordon Heights’s own scale
7 of the readings below were taken at Gordon Heights's own scale — its own ~232-day season between 28°F freezes, the 1,091 acres it covers and 2,183 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Gordon Heights's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Gordon Heights's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Mar 28 and Nov 15 and the ~232-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 2,183 documented contamination sites on the federal record near Gordon Heights, the closest Nitrate record about 0.5 miles out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- Gordon Heights's boundary and the 1,091 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7b and a ~232-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at Gordon Heights's own centroid, the Atlantic Coastal Pine BarrensUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- A documented spotted-lanternfly record within reach of Gordon Heightslydemapr (De Bona & Helmus), 10 km survey lattice
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so Gordon Heights's 1,091 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Suffolk County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Suffolk County
- The growing challenges every New York grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom New York
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Suffolk County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Gordon Heights's 1,091 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of Gordon Heights you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 1,091 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Nitrate record about 0.5 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 Gordon Heights-wide figureread your own land →
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