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Re: USDA zones and new Sunset book

> I saw an ad in a recent garden magazine - Sunset has extended their 
> system to the whole of North America.

The new Sunset book is called "The Sunset National Gardener", or
something like that.  I saw it  a couple of weeks ago at a bookstore
and decided not to buy it.

Several comments:

- I have an old book on American Shrubs that I find very useful (can't
  remember the author).  It uses a similar system to segment the US.
  The zones in the Sunset book look a lot like the ones in my
  book.  Since I didn't have the books side-by-side, I am not sure
  if the two systems are exactly the same, but they are certainly similar.
- Using the Sunset book, you are restricted to the plants which they 
  rate, since others books do not use that system.
- The zones they describe cover very large areas (unlike many of their
  western zones).  It is probably not at a high enough granularity.
  For example,  I am successfully growing a large number of plants
  which they do not rate as hardy in my area.  Similarly, they rate plants
  which I know will not grow here as being hardy.  While in any
  generalized scheme, some of this is inevitable, there seemed to
  be lot of these types of "issues". 

The  Sunset scheme is a step in the right direction.  I hope 
it catches on and evolves into a more specific and more broadly
excepted approach.  But for now, I will wait and see.
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