Highland Hills, Ohio, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6a — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
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 Highland 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 Highland 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 Highland Hills — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Highland Hills — the short answer
Highland Hills, Ohio: USDA zone 6a, about 209 days between hard freezes, across 1K acres of town.
- USDA zone
- 6a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 14
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 9
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~209
- 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 6a is Highland Hills's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Highland Hills's 209-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in Highland Hills
Each reading below is measured for Highland Hills itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredHighland Hills runs about 209 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
MeasuredHighland Hills sits in USDA hardiness zone 6a.
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 Highland Hills is in
Highland Hills sits in the Erie Drift Plain — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. That is read at Highland Hills's own centroid rather than borrowed from Cuyahoga County.
What Grows in Highland Hills
Every plant below cleared Highland Hills's own zone 6a and its 209-day season. Each card opens that plant's Ohio profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in Highland 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 17; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 14 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 9 — 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 Highland Hills
Spotted lanternfly documented 1 miles from Highland Hills, first recorded 2023. What to watch for.
What's on the federal record near Highland Hills
Closest first, within ~10 miles of Highland Hills. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS REHABILITATION HOSPITALBrownfields · 1100 ft
- NATIONAL GUARD BUREAU USPFOUnderground Storage Tanks · 1400 ft
- CUYAHOGA HILLS BOYS SCHOOLUnderground Storage Tanks · 1600 ft
- FMS #3Brownfields · 1700 ft
- WARRENSVILLE DEVELOPMENT CENTERUnderground Storage Tanks · 1800 ft
- TREMCO INCBrownfields · 0.5 mi
- 2ND LT WILLIAM S. HUISMANUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
- SPEEDY GASUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.7 mi
- UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICEUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.7 mi
- WARRENSVILLE HTS BD OF ED SENIOR HIGHBrownfields · 0.7 mi
- CLEVELAND HOUSE OF CORRECTIONSUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.7 mi
- HEXAGRAM INCToxics Release Inventory · 0.8 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Highland 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 Highland Hills.
Total Sites
3,473
within ~10 miles of Highland Hills
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
60 Superfund sites (none NPL-listed)
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of Highland Hills
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of Highland Hills
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Highland Hills, two things run higher than the national average within ~10 miles of Highland Hills — Toxics Release Inventory (389 sites) and Superfund (60 sites). Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Toxics Release Inventory: TRI facilities report annual chemical releases to air, water, and land.
Superfund: Superfund sites represent the most severe contamination in the federal system.
Check prevailing wind direction — downwind parcels face higher exposure than upwind or crosswind locations.
Commission professional soil testing before any food production (test for heavy metals, VOCs, and SVOCs).
Check your specific parcel in Highland 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 Highland Hills average
Your land is one point inside Highland Hills
Everything above resolves to Highland Hills 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 Highland Hills Average
Highland Hills Average
- ●USDA Zones 6a, averaged across Highland Hills
- ●One soil character for all of Highland Hills
- ●Frost dates read at Highland Hills's scale: Apr 14 to Nov 9
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Highland Hills's 6a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in Highland Hills
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Highland Hills, Ohio — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Highland Hills averages can't show:
We read public map data around Highland Hills — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Highland Hills average
How we know this about Highland 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 Highland 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 Highland Hills
When does frost risk typically end in Highland Hills?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Highland Hills typically lands around Apr 14, 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 May 5.
When is the first frost in Highland Hills?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in Highland Hills typically arrives around Nov 9, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Oct 26, so the watching starts about Oct 10 — about 209 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in Highland Hills?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Highland Hills sees about 209 frost-free days — roughly Apr 14 through Nov 9, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer May 5 to Oct 26, about 174 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Highland Hills?
The federal record around Highland Hills is a meaningful one — 3,473 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (1,760), the nearest Brownfields record about 0.2 miles 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 Highland Hills?
From about Oct 10 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 9 (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 9. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at Highland Hills's scale — its 6a band and its 209-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Highland 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 Highland Hills’s own scale
7 of the readings below were taken at Highland Hills's own scale — its own ~209-day season between 28°F freezes, the 1,253 acres it covers and 3,473 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Highland Hills's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Highland Hills's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Apr 14 and Nov 9 and the ~209-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 3,473 documented contamination sites on the federal record near Highland Hills, the closest Brownfields record about 0.2 miles out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- Highland Hills's boundary and the 1,253 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6a and a ~209-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at Highland Hills's own centroid, the Erie Drift PlainUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- A documented spotted-lanternfly record within reach of Highland Hillslydemapr (De Bona & Helmus), 10 km survey lattice
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so Highland Hills's 1,253 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Cuyahoga County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Cuyahoga County
- The growing challenges every Ohio grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Ohio
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Cuyahoga County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Highland Hills's 1,253 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of Highland 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 1,253 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Brownfields record about 0.2 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 Highland Hills-wide figureread your own land →