When starting a new garden, most people begin by looking up which USDA plant hardiness zone their property falls within. Yet this only provides a baseline indicator for likely minimum temperatures. The climate, landscape characteristics, and soil types of your specific parcel aren't shown on the zone map over time.
Maps and photos
Maps and aerial photos can provide insight into your property's past. Contact your local library, historical society, or planning department to find archived maps. Study vegetation patterns, water bodies, topology, and built structures. How did the landscape change over the decades? Did intermittent streams, ponds, or marshes get filled in? Were trees cleared for agriculture or buildings? Are hillsides flattened or channels dug? Knowing prior conditions provides context. Also, search historical registries or talk to longtime neighborhood residents for vintage photos of your property. Pictures reveal previous garden layouts, tree canopies, driveway and fence configurations that impacted sun exposure, drainage flow, and wind patterns. You discover remnant structures like irrigation ditches, fountains, retaining walls, or cold frames that affected microclimates. Analyze old landscaping choices for zone indicators like citrus vs. maple trees. Replicating or avoiding past designs based on performance guides current planting.
Records at local resource archives
Beyond maps and photos, county assessor records contain specific property details. For past permits, surveys, soil analyses, and geological studies check the Archives. To inform amendments, soil analyses identify nutrients, permeability, drainage capacity, and other data. California planting zone map, cross-sections, flood risk maps, watersheds, and elevation views provide topographic information. University agricultural extension offices have prior land use reports, crop yield histories, irrigation water quality tests, and farming recommendations. Study these for clues on production potentials and limitations. Before the construction of new subdivisions, an environmental impact report analyzes hydrology, microclimates, and other baseline conditions. Dig into the dirt literally by taking your soil core samples across the property and getting lab analyses done if no past data exists. This establishes a benchmark to compare future changes.
Talk to long-time neighbors
- Any major earthwork, flooding, tree removal, or construction projects they recall on the property.
- Observations of sun, shade, wind, frost pockets, soggy spots, or drainage issues on different parts of the property over the years.
- Where snow drifts tended to collect in winter.
- Microclimates they associate with nearby bodies of water or hills.
- Recollections of severe weather events like storms, drought, freezes, or heat waves and how the landscape fared.
- History of wildfires or smoke impacts on the area.
- Wildlife populations and migration patterns they have observed over time.
- How the area has changed generally over decades in terms of development, roads, vegetation, flooding risk, etc.
Take note of any prevailing winds, views, noise pollution, liability issues, average temperatures, soil quirks, and other considerations they raise based on local knowledge. Also, ask what gardening challenges they deal with or successes they have had to gauge zone boundaries. Photos, diaries, or other records they kept have observations from over the years to corroborate recollections.
