Privacy Policy

The short version

PlantZoneFinder is a static reference site — a planting planner and a set of climate and hardiness data pages. It is built to need as little of your data as technically possible: no accounts, no sign-ups, and no personal data collected by the site itself. You can read every page and run the planner without giving up anything about yourself. To keep the site free, it shows ads through Google AdSense — the one third party involved; the Advertising section explains exactly what that means and how to opt out.

Ads are the only reason any third party is involved at all. When an ad is shown, Google and its advertising partners may use cookies or device identifiers to serve and measure it. The Advertising section below spells this out in full and links you to the controls for turning personalized ads off.

Information we do NOT collect

Because there is nothing to log into and nothing to buy, the site never asks for and never stores:

• Names, email addresses, phone numbers, or postal addresses.
• Account credentials — there are no accounts.
• Payment or billing information — nothing is sold here.
• Precise location, contacts, photos, or any device data beyond what your browser sends with an ordinary web request.
• Advertising or tracking identifiers created by us — the site sets none of its own. Ads are served by Google AdSense, which may set its own advertising cookies; see Advertising.

What the planner does with your input

The planting planner runs entirely in your browser. The ZIP code or city you enter is used only to look up and display your on-screen result — hardiness zone, frost dates, and planting calendar. It is not sent to any server, not stored, and not associated with you. Reload the page and it is gone.

Cookies and local storage

PlantZoneFinder sets no cookies of its own and uses no browser storage to profile you — the pages and planner are cookie-free. The one exception is advertising: the third-party Google AdSense ads described under Advertising may set or read cookies and device identifiers in your browser. Those are set by Google, not by this site, and the opt-out links below let you turn personalized ads off.

Analytics

Traffic is measured with aggregate, privacy-preserving analytics that do not use cookies and collect no personal data (currently Cloudflare Web Analytics). This tells the site things like how many people viewed a page, which pages are popular, roughly which country visits came from, and what site referred them — always in aggregate. It does not use cookies, does not build a per-visitor profile, and does not track you across other websites.

No advertising identifier, no fingerprint, and no personal identifier is created or stored for analytics. If cookieless analytics is ever swapped for a different provider, it will be held to the same standard: no cookies, no personal data, no cross-site tracking.

Advertising

PlantZoneFinder shows third-party ads through Google AdSense to help cover hosting and data costs. This section explains what that means for your privacy and how to control it.

PlantZoneFinder displays third-party advertisements through Google AdSense and Google's advertising partners. When ads are served, those ad networks may set and read cookies or use device identifiers to serve, cap, and measure ads — and, where permitted, to show ads relevant to your interests. This activity is controlled by the ad networks under their own privacy policies, not by this site.

Google, as a third-party vendor, uses cookies (including its advertising cookies) to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to this and other websites. You can learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services, and control the data used to personalize ads, at these Google resources:

• How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services: policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
• Google advertising and cookies: policies.google.com/technologies/ads
• Manage or opt out of personalized Google ads (My Ad Center): myadcenter.google.com
• Opt out of personalized advertising from many vendors at once: optout.aboutads.info (Digital Advertising Alliance) and youradchoices.com

The advertising partner in use is Google AdSense. If additional ad partners are ever added, this policy and the "last updated" date at the top of this page will be revised. Advertising never alters a published frost date, hardiness zone, or planting recommendation on this site.

Third-party links

Pages here link out to primary sources — chiefly NOAA, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the USDA — and to reference material. Those sites have their own privacy practices, which we do not control. This policy covers only PlantZoneFinder.

Server logs and security

Like virtually every website, the hosting infrastructure may briefly process standard request metadata — your IP address, user-agent string, and the page requested — for the ordinary purposes of delivering the page and protecting the site from abuse and attacks. Any such logs are short-lived, are handled by the hosting/CDN provider, and are not used to build a profile of you or combined with analytics.

Data retention

There is little to retain. No personal data is collected, so none is kept. Analytics data exists only in aggregate with no personal identifiers. Transient server/CDN logs are retained only as long as the hosting provider needs them for security and operations, then discarded.

Children's privacy

This is a general-audience reference site that knowingly collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

Your choices

You can browse the entire site with cookies disabled — none of its own features depend on them. The opt-out links in the Advertising section let you turn off personalized Google ads at the network level.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes — most likely to activate the Advertising section — the "last updated" date at the top of the page will be revised. Material changes affecting what data third parties may collect will be reflected here before they take effect.

Contact

PlantZoneFinder is an independent gardening-data project. Questions about privacy, or a request about any data you believe is held, can be sent to contact@plantzonefinder.com.