I put down zone 8/9 under the assumption that I still get a bit of an urban heat island effect even in a London suburb but I can't say I'm sure that my rating is right.

I think I'm in zone 8. Though the gentle radiance of a thousand central heating systems leaking into the atmosphere does make a difference. I notice differences between the allotment, 5 minutes walk away, and my very protected back garden.

I still refer to this map created by a member here (not me) which is pretty accurate and pretty detailed. It puts me at the warm edge of zone 8 which is about right for an average over the last twenty years, but I just haven't had a winter that cold since 1995/6.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Nice to see my map still in use! Lowest temperature here (Northumberland, 11km inland) was -5 or -6°C on 29th. Resin PS has anyone else noticed this forum won't show carriage returns (paragraphs) any more? Seems to be just this one, paras are still possible in the other forums. Can't even do it with a couple of html [br] new-line codes.

Can I ask how useful are these 'Yankee' Zones in UK conditions, where almost the whole of England apart from western coastal areas and the Pennines are supposed to be in Zone 8? Surely local conditions such as degree of shelter, amount of rainfall and altitude are far more important factors. Just a thought!

They're as useful as they are anywhere - which is as an indicator of winter cold, but not a lot else. Know what they are, and they're useful for that, but don't expect them to tell you anything about other climatic factors (most importantly summer temperatures). Exactly the same can be said of the US, of course, they are no more or less useful there than they are here. Resin

Surely they must have much more use in 'Continental' US conditions, where there is such a wide variation of temperatures: ranging from sub-tropical in the deep South, to Arctic in Alaska. Annoying about the loss of paragraphs on this Message Board isn't it?

Sounds like Northumberland was almost balmy the other night. We had it down to -8 degrees C. in the warmest part of the garden. Mind you just down the road when we had a cold winter about 20 years ago they had a record -25 degrees, it was the coldest spot in the country.

Hi Robby - obviously over a whole continent, there's far more variation; Britain is like a single US state in terms of size comparisons, alternatively compare the US with the EU, which has everything from zone 10 in southern Spain to zone 2 in northeast Finland. It doesn't make the applicability of the zone scale any better or worse Resin

I noticed the lack of paragraphs as well. It really shows up on the thread about gardeners world as those comments made at the beginning of the thread many months ago are still written in the format with paragraphs, but those added recently are in the new format. I made the same comment about it there as you have here Pineresin. I wonder why they have done it. Seems a bit silly to me. Alison

HTML doesn't work on GardenWeb Europe, GardenWeb Australia, Nature.Net and Glyphs forums since a couple of weeks. It seems iVillage is testing the formatting of messages and so far, all they did is break what didn't need to be fixed. When asked by mail when it will work again, their answer is "This problem has been reported to our tech team and should be fixed soon. Because of the holiday weekend, it may take a bit longer to resolve, but we certainly appreciate your patience." That was last week . . .

Here is a link that might be useful: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/suggest/msg1210252014169.html?29

Mm, I keep intermittently having my posts losing paragraphs.. Sometimes works fine, sometimes gets wonky. Anyway.. seems we're just into zone 8b in sunny Manchester, although our garden is quite sheltered as three sides of it are walled. Lowest recorded was -7.1 C about a week ago.