To Label or Not to Label?
There are some of us who aspire to put plants together in a considered and beautiful setting in such a way that they offer visual delight in their associations and general amazing wonderfulness. This sadly cuts no ice with the plant collectors, sometimes flattered by the term ‘plantsmen’ before that became illegal. Plants Persons, then, perhaps. Perhaps there’s a little of them in all of us gardeners. I imagine it’s possible that Constable saw a new paint on someone’s canvas and longed to know what it was and how he could get some.
A great addition ??
Anyway, these people want labels on the plants so that they can – yes – go off and get some. Especially if, tragically, you fail to offer a nursery on the premises where they can obtain them effortlessly and ideally cheaply.
I have heard that “The curator at Abbotsbury subtropical gardens said ‘Many people want to know plant names and often put down ‘poor labelling’ as a negative on our visitor surveys.'” O, ouch.
They’re ugly?
Labels are not usually a beautiful addition to a garden.
This one is quite nice. I think I could settle for having 700,000 of these at Veddw..
They don’t work.
They do come in many different guises, none of which are satisfactorily permanent if affordable. Most of us can only afford plastic, written on with ‘permanent markers’ which fail to offer anything beyond a few tantalising and frustrating smudges after six months. Pencil is marginally better and I am trying burying the labels in pots to see if the absence of light helps. Examining the emerging growth of mystery plants in the nursery this spring will enlighten me. Or not.
Upside down label – will it tell me what is here??
But were your labels ever so posh, where can you site them in a garden that has, as it should, wall to wall plants all happy and fully in bloom in summer? Some gardens we visit have visible labels in spring, when understandably there is much space between the emerging plants. But this may lead to some confusion when a label which accurately identified an herbaceous plant in summer sits by a bulb in spring.
Err… no.
Other bad things
There are other downsides to labels. Blackbirds pull out and chuck. So, apparently, do some visitors. People trample on the beds and maybe even the plants in their eagerness to get a name. You have to bend down to stick them in. And bend down to read them.
Perhaps this will be the future? But I see a certain fading already and it’s a whopping size.
QR code. Bit big though?
And some people find an app on their phone will identify plants. Sounds good to me. Phones do help: people bring their pictures of my plants to identify these days. Much easier than those confusing descriptions going ‘it’s over there somewhere, behind that hedge..’
So, do I ever label? I have done recently, I confess. It was a new planting and I thought I’d enjoy knowing what these strange plants which I hadn’t had before were when they popped up in the spring. Oh huh.
Well, one survived, being the nursery’s label.
Blimey! Look at the price!
We do have a system of sorts for identifying our plants at Veddw. Charles cannot sell a picture with plants in unless they are accurately labelled so we’ve had a go at a system for knowing what some of them are. We have a box containing a big envelope for each part of the garden and a plant label goes in the envelope whenever usually when I plant something new. This limits the guesswork…
And I did discover a context where I thought labels added a certain something. I’d love to show you, but can’t find a picture. However, it’s like this. I have sometimes displayed succulents in a divided box – so:
There’s one label in this set, but it hardly makes my point.
And I have been known to include labels in the pots in the box and found it sort of looked right. I think because they have a kind of ‘specimen’ or ‘collection’ look. It would be a good time to use some really nice labels. All of which is a far cry from a rather wild and woolly garden scene, though.
Wild and Woolly and no labels.
I fear we will never grow rich, opening our garden. No labels, no teas, no guided tours, no mornings….
Labels anyone?
I am always grateful when I visit a garden that labels their plants. I don’t want the label in the picture so I snap the plant then the label. That allows me to submit the image as stock. But aesthetically I loathe labels unless they are in a formalised display. For instance an auricular “theatre” with hand written labels looks nice (but I’d still take a close up without the label). Our system of putting the labels in envelopes has its limitations. With ferns for instance, the differences between them often being so subtle that if you have several you are buggered. Of course Anne could write directions onto the label like “next to the clematis “ but to be honest it was an achievement just getting her to write “Ruin” or “front garden”. So labels, yes please – in other peoples gardens.
I like labels in a botanical garden, which is a sort of zoo for plants. There’s a Pleistocene Garden near me showing the mix of plants that grew in Los Angeles 20,000 years ago, and the labels there are handy if often missing.
I strongly dislike labels in an aesthetic garden, and fortunately so do my clients so far. I do use a phone app to ID mystery plants, especially as one client drops by nurseries weekly and brightly announces, “Here’s a new plant! Isn’t it beautiful? What is it?” Several have had no label at all. (And many have been severely root-bound, which I find dismaying.) The online apps seem to ID correctly around 85% of the time.
85% is interesting. I must pursue this for my own benefit. (Our visitors would be thwarted by the lack of mobile signal.). Wouldn’t it be great if this whole label thing became history?
That QR code one would be one more thing for me to trip over.
Good point.
I tried labeling. They got lost or mangled, faded away, became too brittle to be useful. I’ve given up on labeling in place. Instead, I got a photo album from a thrift store, put the tags/labels where the photos should go, and add a general description of where they are in the garden. Only done for perennial types in-ground, since they won’t change. Labels for potted plants just get added to one page en masse; annuals (tags or seed packets) all get put in the back of the album. Works better than any other system I’ve attempted over the years.
That’s my system, too…only successful one so far. (I still haven’t figured out a perennial labeling system that the chipmunks and birds haven’t foiled.)
Thanks for the idea. Envelopes for plant labels is ALL I am willing to countenance…
Your comment about Constable looking for that new paint he’d spotted in someone else’s painting reminded me of a comment you once made, or wrote, about garden design vs plant labeling that made me laugh out loud. As I recall, you were visiting a garden with other gardeners; when you raised a question about design, you were met with silence followed by a rapid change of subject, as if you had displayed bad manners. You compared that response to visiting an art gallery, where people would put stickers all over the paintings to identify each colour so they could buy it themselves.
I only use labels when growing plants from seed. And yes, the writing on the labels fades and my good intentions are thwarted once again.
Yep, that was me. Design is apparently a forbidden art amongst some garden visitors, those on a plant hunt. I was once in an RHS lecture where the mention of garden design produced a huge groan in the audience. Yet in the UK the admired ‘gardeners’ are 90% garden designers……
Labeling mafiosos? I went to a Hosta Society meeting once. We toured one boring monoculture garden after another. There was a Hosta triumvirate—the three kings— who huddled every few yards to assess the proper nomenclature. When they decided it was wrong, they humiliated the host by turning the label around. Take that you stupid idiot.
O yuk!
Wow. That plays merry hell with the idea that all plant people are wonderful. – MW
I do label, my weak brain otherwise wouldn’t remember what the plant is and how to take care of it (except, of course, for the few familiar and long-time plants that I will always be able to identify). I buy copper labels and use an embossing set to put down the plant name and the year of planting. The label then is put on a stake made of strong green garden wire. (I only label one or two plants of the same species when put in different areas of the garden, just to increase my chances of identification.) The copper blends in nicely with the soil and the surroundings, even more so when it develops its patina. And the embossed letters make sure I can still read the label years later – as long as deer, storms, or my rubber-booted feet have not demolished the label or carried it off. My fall-back option is the fat binder with plant name, photo and description of the approximate area where the plant lives. Perfect solution? No. But it’s nice to know that even when the label goes missing and my brain fails, I might have a chance to figure out what plant it is that just in that moment delights or worries me.
Thank you, Anne, once again for choosing such a hands-on topic!
And thank you for your idea, Evelyn. You can tell from the post that my dedication wouldn’t run to that but it might just hit the spot with some. Especially those of us who used to print copper messages from a fun machine in railway stations.
When I looked at the last “wild & wooly” photo, I had a thought. What about a small diagram mounted on a stump, flat rick, etc., just outside or at the edge of the garden, showing the name and location of each plant?
You’re pulling my leg? Over all four acres? Perhaps if you see the wider picture and the seasonal changes, you’ll get my point – here is more about that part of the garden: https://veddw.com/south-garden-wild-garden-headstones/
I use See-Fine steel stakes and then use a PT Brother label that does not fade in any weather. Then push them down pretty far down to the ground. The plant foliage will cover those labels quite well. I hate to use labels but when having garden tours and people asking about one plant or another you can get quite addlepated so that is my solution. I use the latin names first with the common name below so I look smart! 🙂 When going on tours of other gardens, I’ll take the photo first, then the label so I can put it on the photo id later. I have tons of labels that I group and save together by years. It does help later on if I need to go through them for a lost id.
My method exactly, plus lots of photos. Not every perennial needs to be labeled – just a sample so you can identify it brothers elsewhere. I also place a label in areas where I’ve had plants that self-sow. That way you can remember from year to year what those little sprouts are.
As a garden designer drawing up plans for clients I decided I would do rough sketches for my various gardens. Each garden has a name, I do a sketch with plant placement and then take pictures and name the plants. my digital record with comments allows me to keep track of who did well, who didn’t and was replaced and what their name is (really good info for someone with a bad memory). It all works pretty well.
There’s an app for that-haven’t tried it yet in my own gardens, but digital labelling is now available for north Texas residential and public garden use. Check it out http://www.planttagg.com
This is the future and liberation!
I am older with a slippery memory. I use zinc labels with a PT Brother stick on. For my daylilies and dahlias I add a small round number tag. I then make a map in case the tag disappears. There are probably 15,000 named dahlia cultivars. Sharpies do not last,
I continue to love labels in other people’s gardens, and in my own. I also love good design, but unless I am taking a photograph, I don’t feel the labels detract from it as long as they are standardized and not haphazard. And not white.
I use the same labeling system as Laurie B, and for the same reasons as Evelyn C. – plus a journal that gives a general idea of where a plant is. It is absolutely wonderful for trees as I put the date of planting on the label and it is so often not when I thought it was – checking the label keeps me honest. Yes I know it is a bother to look at in early spring, but like Laurie, I tuck them down to ground level and like Evelyn, there’s usually only one label in the entire garden for plants that might be repeated elsewhere. Chanticleer (which I will take you to someday if you and Charles ever visit) is a staunchly no-label garden. Art trumps academia. However, they do have extensive and updated plant lists for each themed garden. I totally understand this approach, and it works for me as I know general families and ID characteristics to match the list name to the mystery plant if I want it, but for beginners….I don’t know where they would start. It’s an interesting topic and a great post. – MW
I know of those plant lists, such as Chanticleer courageously (and labour intensively?) offer. If I remember rightly, Piet Oudolf does the same, and with those I never managed to match plant to picture, or managed to focus on such a thing while in a garden. I would so love us to be moved beyond ‘what’s that plant?’
However, I find that garden visitors enquire almost inevitably about the same few plants and these days bring me a photo and we tell them what it is.
I go back and forth on labeling. On the one hand, it’s very convenient for alerting a helpful spouse that no, that’s not a weed. On the other hand, aesthetically speaking, it turns a garden into a mouse cemetery. In our garden, my partner and I have taken to only labeling plants that we paid more than $40 for. Or very special woody plants that are hard to come by. Or plants with names that give us a total mental block like Helwingia ….
Mouse cemetery! Hehe. I love it.
I love mouse cemetery too – and your criteria for bestowing a label.
Lol, very pro label because my mind is mush.
Sharpies only last 8 months in sunlight. Even when the writing is facing north. (Yeah, that seemed like I was accomplishing something when I came up with that idea.)
A good fat carpenters pencil is good for about 3 years. Maybe a little longer with a magnifying glass and looking at it in bright light.
Those copper and zinc labels marked with a scribe! So fancy! So beautiful!
But I was a lazy gardener before I read your funny books. So…
Original plastic label mostly buried always in front of the plant, with only 1/2″ inch sticking up. (Which will become brittle in sunlight over a few years and break off when you go to verify your memory.)
The Lazy default.
Interesting that no-one has mentioned the horrific expense of posh semi permanent labels.
I don’t see labeling plants in a public garden as the equivalent of labeling paint colors in an art gallery. It’s more like the equivalent of sharing the name of the artwork & the name of the artist, don’t you think? Both public gardens and art galleries have an educational component, and it seems like sharing info with the visitors would encourage further exploration of a plant/artist & help them develop a love & appreciation for the art form.
I make artwork, and during the process of making I am thinking about the experience or encounter that inspired the process. I think of a title which gives a clue, but I would hope the overall composition is enough to stimulate a response. I am an amateur garden lover, I look at gardens as I would a painting or sculpture or photograph. I see composition, and never look at the labels. So I suppose it may be down to whom we making gardens for, for pure pleasure and connection to a sense of place, or to show off our knowledge and skill and educate. The more I think about this, the more private I want to be about my scruffy unlabled horticulturally inept garden !
Probably both versions of the art analogy fall short, but I do understand and appreciate your point of view!
Thank you – you’ve cheered me up! Xxx
I think this is where we differ, Mary. I don’t see the plants as works of art, I see the art being in how they are put together — as paints in a painting. Nor do I see gardens – or art galleries – as places to educate in the sense of ‘here is how to’. I hope works of art of all kinds take people beyond the ‘how did they do that?’. I know I am in a minority, but that has been my campaign for the past 35 years…..(I’m with Mr P Steer, who is unduly modest about his garden)
I look forward to the continuation of your dialogue with Marianne.
As I am nothing but a plant nerd, I find the individual plants the most fascinating part. Even the beautiful common plants.
My fascination is with unusual plants that do not require staking or extreme care.
We live in a hot humid climate just outside of the band of “normally grown” shrubs and especially perennials (what i would consider the USDA zones 5 to 7 market, that many nurseries grow for). Learning of surviving outlier varieties of what I once considered common plants has been fascinating.
Being able to combine them with more tender plants that are equally beautiful has been a lot of fun.
Being able to combine those plants in a beautiful design (hopefully) is a wonderful lagniappe.
Umm, limited space, and a plant hoarder with dreams of being retired as a tiny specialty nursery. Or at least that’s the excuse.
Our back garden might look more like an art museum’s storage area?
Good thing we stick with mostly shade plants.
Contemplating the amazing individual beauty of unusual single plants vs contemplating an acre of plants used together in an artistic way?
I remember traveling with someone who thought the Rose Garden we were visiting was beautiful. Her favorite part was the brick terrace with the low brick wall. There were cut outs in the floor of the terrace for individual rose bushes.
The individual plants didn’t really register for her but she thought the space was beautiful. She enjoyed being in it.
That’s sort of how I think of the “design first/individual plants 2nd” concept.
I love spending hours in our beautiful local Botanical Garden. The various vistas are beautiful!
But I spend most of my time walking from one section to another to look at individual plants.
lagniappe. There’s a beautiful word. I think that, with your preoccupation with the individual plants, you are in the majority of dedicated garden makers. I treasure garden visits from those who are like your friend in the Rose Garden….
I can see I am in the minority here but I come down firmly on the side of labeling. When in bloom I can ID the variety 90+% of the time. But when I have multiple varieties of a plant and I want to divide to share a specific plant ,labels are a must. I use Kincaid Stainless Steel plant markers with Brother P-TouchTze labels. The first ones are now 20 years old, no fading, peeling or cracking.I can push them down next to the ground to avoid the tombstone look. Even if I don’t, the foliage covers them up. I’m in MN, the snow covers them for nearly 6 months and even if it doesn’t people are not exactly standing around outside when it’s -20F thinking ” oh look at all those little tombstones.
These are the labels I use too Anne. They are more expensive than buying a pack of 50 plastic sticks, but they are fully reusable (just razor the P-touch sticker off), and last forever. I was put onto them by a daylily breeder and I never looked back. – MW
But I don’t like labels. Have 10 million unlabelled plants happily blossoming in anonymous splendour. We cultivate weeds and have land full of native plants too numerous and subtle to identify unless we have a serious botanist here. We tell people the plant names they wish for 90% of the time. Blackbirds play flip with all such things. I don’t want people treading on plants to reach the labels 6 feet into the beds (we have wide beds). I could not keep up with the comings and goings or the seasonality of the plants. (see my photo above: not our garden because we don’t do labels). It detracts from the wider view which I hope people may embrace. I am pretty worn out without extra labelling tasks. And/or I prefer writing here than on any kinds of labels. People in this country are beginning (I blame you lot) to invent jolly new names for plants as young people, we are told, can’t manage Latin names, so what would I call things?. I have no idea what some things are anyway. Come and see if you can love this place in happy plant ignorance! Soon! Xxxxx
I like to label plants that I plant in my wilder areas to see how they do for a year or so and to remember what they are. Most garden labels and their stakes are too short for my purposes. Now I use 3′ tall and 3/8″ diameter wooden dowels with a grooved place at the top to hold a metal label (embossable) on wire. For shrubs further out, I used metal stakes meant for holding electric fence (which are narrow and brown and easy to push in the ground) with the same metal labels. I leave these for several years to see how the shrub does.
I guess I’m a plant geek who also loves good design. I love to know what a plant is – not to collect it necessarily, but just to know. I love to learn about it. Whenever I visit my kids in Portland, OR, one of my favorite things to do is just walk around the neighborhoods and look at all the gardens people have planted. (It seems nearly everyone in Portland gardens!) I both enjoy the aesthetics and the variety of plants, and want to learn about them. I know very well that many things that grow there won’t survive in my Texas heat, clay, and drought, but I still want to know about them. Most privet gardeners don’t use labels, that I’ve noticed. I have learned to use apps for ID. I do the same thing when on a nature walk. Every time I see a plant I don’t know, I stop, whip out my phone, and try to find it on an app so I can learn about it.
My biggest pet peeve about labeling in a public garden is the inconsistency. If they are going to label stuff, please label everything, so we know which plant the label goes to. But that’s probably impossible.
My final comment on this subject is about the labels that hang on plants. A very long, long, time ago, I saw an episode of Victory Garden where the host pointed out that no matter which limb one hung a plant label on, that limb died. I have found that to be very true indeed.
That was supposed to be, “Most private gardeners…” Privet gardeners – ha!
I thought that was an interesting designation>
I am concluding that apps are the way to go. Wherever there is actually a mobile signal… (ie not yet at Veddw)
Plants in my garden must “earn” a label by surviving one winter. I use metal labels with the plant name added with a printed label, which is then sprayed with clear lacquer. Unfortunately, this does not save the labels from being run over by dogs, pulled out by hoses or stepped on by me. But at least I know what the plants are.
I attempt to label things in my garden for my own use–and try to write down what i planted in my garden journal. I’m planting so many new things; if something succeeds I need some way to remember what the hell it was.
On labels in other gardens, I only hold the NC Botanical Garden to labels. They have a big staff and a big mission to spread native plants. They have staff just to pull out labels and put them in the ground next to whatever’s blooming, then take them out when it’s dormant to reduce confusion. For anyone with fewer staff and less funding– no labels needed!
‘No labels needed’! Hurray! That’s us.
I’ve mostly given up on labeling varieties but see the value of marking plants with a small wooden stake. Newer plants or smaller perennials that look weedy don’t stand a chance otherwise!
Even if I don’t love plastic labels, I try to read and respect them. My father worked at a greenhouse and spent many, many days in the “tag room,” among the floor-to-ceiling bins of plastic plant tags that went out with every order. He told me there were at least a half dozen different red geraniums (pelargoniums) alone!
I am a newer gardener and getting better at recognizing plants without labels but when I have several of a plant I do try to differentiate them. For example I use recycled plastic strips and marker to identify dahlia varieties as they are sprouting, and tie labels to the base of the stem when they get a bit taller. The labels get stored with the tubers all winter so I can attempt to arrange the plants by color.
You will need to know just what you are going to plant….
I use labels on about half of the plants in my garden, for the sole purpose of helping myself remember where the “important” ones are located. For this reason, I usually “hide” the labels so they are as invisible as possible, although that’s not always possible. I do have a journal/list of plants that describes where I planted them in the garden, not they can not be as specific as the label points to.
I often buy one plant to see if it lives and if I like it in a few years when it matures. I need a label to know the cultivar so I can look for more. Also, my memory will fade over time and discrete, permanent labels help.
As I age into my forgetfullness concerning plant labels, I have talked my ceramicist son into making me natural stoneware labels with a whipe of a earth brown stain to fill in the letters. We have wintertime temps. dipping into the low teen and I wanted something that would be weather worth and not crack or fade. I have had them in the various gardens now for 4 years and they work really well and have not had to be replaced.
Good tip for those who could commission such a thing. I would need several thousand which might try a ceramicist’s patience…..
He didn’t charge me, sinse I’m his mum, but he does charge $6.00 for each one ( 7″ in length with top inscription being 3″) and he gives discounts for every 5 ordered because he does have to create them and fire them and ship them. It’s not thousands of dollars unless you need thousands of them..
It would be thousands…….!