Hardiness Zone Grounding Data

Overview

Send a five-digit US ZIP code to receive the location's temperature range in Fahrenheit and the formatted zone title. Paid subscriptions expand the response with the exact alphanumeric zone code, Celsius temperature bands, climate descriptions, and lists of suitable plants for that growing environment.

Live Test Hardiness Zone Grounding Data Source →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveContext server, this appears in its tool list as HardinessZoneGroundingData. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

{
  "name": "HardinessZoneGroundingData",
  "arguments": {
    "zip": "97201"
  }
}

You do not name the tool yourself; the model picks it. Asking about 97201 in the terms this source covers is enough for it to reach for HardinessZoneGroundingData on its own — naming it explicitly also works, and is the way to force the call.

Connecting

One server URL covers every source in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervecontext": {
      "url": "https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

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{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "zipCode": "97201",
    "zone": "8b",
    "tempRange": "15 to 20",
    "zoneTitle": "8b: 15 to 20",
    "details": {
      "tempRange": "15°F to 20°F (-9°C to -7°C)",
      "description": "Mild and relatively warm, found in parts of southern U.S. like the Gulf Coast and parts of Texas.",
      "plantSurvival": "A wide range of plants, including many Mediterranean and subtropical varieties."
    }
  }
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Why ground on it

A model can produce something that looks like this answer from its training data, and be confidently out of date or simply wrong. This source returns the current value in a shape you can check, which is the difference between an answer you can cite and one you have to hedge.

Point an evaluation at zipCode: it is the field most worth pinning a claim to, and it is either present and current or absent — never plausibly invented.

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

A call costs 2 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

Nursery Catalog Filtering

Seed and plant retailers filter product catalogs by customer ZIP code to hide varieties that cannot survive local winter lows.

Landscape Project Planning

To prevent winter plant loss, landscaping software checks minimum temperatures during site intake to recommend trees and shrubs suited to the property.

Garden Calendar Scheduling

Before scheduling seasonal planting alerts, home gardening apps look up regional temperature ranges to adjust spring and fall frost timelines.

Farm Risk Evaluation

When evaluating crop risk for smallholdings, underwriters confirm local cold-hardiness thresholds against regional boundaries.

Other ways to use Hardiness Zone Grounding Data

Set up Hardiness Zone Grounding Data on VerveContext, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveContext account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

Related

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