When to Plant Verbena in Zion, IL

One of the first steps you take when you are determining your gardening schedule is find your USDA Zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

A way of determining when it's a good idea to plant verbena is to refer to the USDA zone info for Zion.


Planting Calendar for Verbena

Frost tolerance for verbena: Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant: Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

Verbena do well in mild cold which means that you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Legend 
A good time to plant verbena
Possibly ok, but a risky time to plant verbena
Probably not a good time to plant verbena

The earliest that you can plant verbena in Zion is March. However, you really should wait until April if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant verbena and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your verbena may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your verbena indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Zion. It might get as low as -15°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Zion is not always accurate the actual date of last frost is different every year. Since half of the time in Zion you get a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your verbena if you have a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Zion

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)October 15
Lowest Expected Low-15°F
Highest Expected Low-10°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -10°F.

Plants to Grow in Zion

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Zion.