Find fruit trees to explore for your Orange County garden. Free to use. No account needed.
Data, sources & privacy
Free to use, with no account required. Explore 37 Orange County city centers. Select a fruit to see a first-pass suitability screen, or switch between winter chill, heat, and frost.
How to read the map
Colored circles show regional planting references. They are not measured microclimate zones. The same chill reference supplies the headline, annual chart and chill-based recommendations. Tap anywhere inside Orange County to drop a pin and see the nearest listed climate reference, with distance shown. An address or GPS pin does not create a yard-level weather measurement.
Climate data
Chill hours count temperatures below 45°F, November through February. Where a qualifying CIMIS station is within 12 miles of a city center, its available-hour totals supply the regional planning reference; elsewhere the city-center ERA5-Land model is used. Distance alone does not guarantee a matching microclimate. The typical range is the 25th–75th percentile of qualifying winters, rounded outward to 25-hour steps. It describes the middle half of reference winters, not the entire city or a guarantee. All source winters fall between 2016–17 and 2025–26; low-coverage station seasons are excluded. Frost days use hourly temperatures ≤32°F in that same window. Summer values cover June–August 2017–2025.
ERA5-Land weather grids are roughly 11 km wide. Small frost pockets, coastal slopes, walls, and shade can differ substantially. Some coastal estimates are lower than local growing guides suggest. Confirm with a local weather station or garden sensor before choosing a chill-sensitive cultivar.
Local station comparisons
Chill comparisons use UC Davis / CIMIS records from Irvine (#75), San Clemente (#241), and Coto de Caza (#245), November–February. Only seasons with at least 99% hourly coverage enter station averages. Missing observations can slightly undercount totals. The headline and station details agree because they use the same selected source. Model and station numbers are not averaged together or altered to make them match. These are regional references, not temperatures measured at your property.
City overviews & soils
City overviews summarize broad coastal, foothill or inland growing considerations; they are not a city-level performance study. USDA SSURGO map units are sampled only at the listed city-center coordinates. A mapped soil name or drainage class does not describe every yard, imported fill, deeper layers or exact dropped pins. Soil references do not automatically alter fruit ratings. The data was retrieved October 19, 2026. Soil reference data · USDA Web Soil Survey.
Recommendations
Earth People screening rules use example cultivar chill targets, summer warmth, and your garden conditions. Tropicals are included as possibilities for suitable protected gardens; survival, flowering and dependable fruiting are different outcomes. Meeting a target is not a prediction of yield. Explore 62 plant categories across orchard fruit, tropicals and rare fruit, berries and vines, and nuts. Curated store listings remain separate from educational profiles. Some rare tropicals and nuts start at Possible here or Higher risk based on their known needs; these editorial screens are not local harvest trials. Cultivar-specific chill requirements are flagged for review when no numeric target is available. Select a category to explore its growing notes and any linked varieties. Bare-root listings are Winter 2027 reservations, not a live-stock feed. Published chill ranges are shown as listed, with their upper end used for the numeric screen. The large category verdict is based on the best-screened listed variety: “Good option”, “Possible here” or “Higher risk”. Each variety keeps its own rating. “Good option” means selected varieties look promising, “Possible here” means a suitable microclimate, variety and care may make growing worthwhile; review the stated climate and garden needs, and “Higher risk” flags a larger screening mismatch. The guide is intentionally exploratory; it does not label fruit impossible based only on a regional model.
Terrain and garden answers add cautions; they do not change the underlying weather record. Pollination, rootstock, drainage, irrigation, sun, and variety choice still matter.
Sources & credits
Open-Meteo / ERA5-Land, Copernicus · CC BY 4.0. Retrieved October 18, 2026. Calculated climate data.
UC Davis chill models · UC Orange County orchard guide · Local variety observations. County boundary: US Census, via Plotly datasets. Basemap: OpenStreetMap contributors. Leaflet © Vladimir Agafonkin.
Tropical growing references
UC ANR: fruit trees for coastal Southern California · Cherimoya and hand pollination · UF/IFAS: banana · UF/IFAS: guava. Florida references inform plant needs and do not establish Orange County suitability.
Privacy & your orchard
Your shortlist is saved in this browser when storage is available. Addresses are sent to the U.S. Census Bureau only when you request an address lookup and are not stored by this guide. GPS is requested only when you tap the location button. My orchard checks named pollenizer references where available and flags unknown combinations for verification. Matching flower types or listed pollenizers does not guarantee bloom overlap or fruiting. Combined shortlist requests are prepared locally; you choose whether to open an email draft or paste the text into our contact form. Shared links include the selected city, fruit filter and shortlist; exact pins, addresses, and garden answers are omitted. Map tiles are requested from OpenStreetMap. Product links include referral tags so Earth People can understand visits from this guide.
Curated product links checked October 19, 2026. Availability and prices are confirmed on the store. Some bare-root trees are Winter 2027 reservations. Mango, banana and rose apple guidance is included even where an individual product listing is not linked yet. Ask us about sourcing.