As seen in the Courant:
At the venerable Comstock Ferre plant and garden center in Wethersfield, owner Pierre Bennerup has begun selling a kind of banana - the “basjoo,” native to Japan - that ordinarily wouldn’t be expected to do well in these climes.
But Bennerup knows of one basjoo that has survived three winters out of doors. “And we’re talking about central Connecticut,” he said. “We just assumed they wouldn’t live, but they do. I don’t know why.”[.]
Published by the National Arbor Day Foundation to take into account rising temperatures attributed to global warming, the [new zone] map - which gardeners use as a guide to what they should plant and when - puts coastal towns, roughly from Old Saybrook to Greenwich, in Zone 7 and the rest of the state in Zone 6.
Both zones represent warmer classifications than those on the U.S. Department of Agriculture hardiness map, which divides the state into three zones. The USDA map was last revised in 1990, before a stretch of record hot years.
Even though Connecticut might be finding itself in a warmer hardiness zone, I suspect that the big icecap in my front yard and front flowerbed should, for now at least, kill any thoughts I might have had of bringing the azaleas I loved growing up in Memphis up here.