Oak Bay would be the same as where I live and that is a zone 8b area.

I would say it is most similar to Seattle, Portland and down to North of Brookings Oregon. Even though Northern Florida is a zone 8 our weather is completely different. We have dry warm summers and cool wet winters. Northern Florida had hot humid sometimes wet summers and dry cool winters.

Oak Bay calls it self the palm tree capital of Canada but believe me when I say Greater Vancouver has a lot more palms than Oak Bay. Maybe per capita they have more but not even close in numbers

Oak Bay (a Victoria suburb) did this to counter the annual flower count in February that Victoria BC has.
Cheers, Barrie.

Regardless,

Those of you on the west coast in those 7 & 8 zones are lucky. Thats my kinda winter!!!

Living in my zone 8 (PNW) isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's frustrating in many instances because we are so close to growing so much more. Often that plant material gets tried and eventually fails. A number of people have devised ways to beat old man winter but without some human intervention, cetain things are not going to be long term. It's a "close but no cigar" climate.

Cheers, Barrie.

Couldn't agree with you more.
Soooooooooo close but sooooooooo far away.

Yup, we're ALL close to growing so much more than our zone allows.

But I have to chuckle...someone in Panama was quoted as saying they'd love to grow a Blue Spruce tree!
😕
Wonder how many they want 🙂
Barb