When I was a young girl, one of my favorite places to hang out with my dad on our one weekend a month we had was the Hoyt Arboretum. Along with it being a cool place to escape the summer heat with lots of fun trails to hike, the arboretum taught me SO much because of its focus on plant identification. In fact, one of the very first trips I went on with my mom and dad and big sister and brother was up to Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC, riding mostly in his backpack (but also on my first 'horse', as you can see below). This led to my love of rose gardens (where we also spent so much time before he took off to go start a new life elsewhere) and, when I got older, botanic gardens. My husband and I fell in love wandering through Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, I loved taking him to the Japanese Gardens in PDX, we loved living near Kubota in the Emerald City, and so with that, we have always made sure that wherever we travel, we find the local gardens to wander through, from Monet's garden at Giverny (below) to a day trip up to Vancouver BC on our 10th anniversary last month.
So where am I going with this? LEARNING about plants. Getting inspired by them, understanding where they grow best. Seeing how horticulture and design integrate into beautiful sanctuaries that help us exhale (and, conversely, noticing which ones DON'T...). And so while I'd always joked about wanting our gardens to be like a botanic garden or arboretum with labels, I didn't start taking the project seriously until our last place, where I started documenting everything I was planting onto Google Docs. It was a HUGE help to be able to not only look at the document when trying to remember what was what, but also when I was at a nursery and desperately racking my brain to recall what that particular kind of salvia was that I wanted three more of!
When we got to the Valley last fall, I went into overdrive with the organization. There were things I'd learned from the prior garden that I wanted to integrate into this document, and things I knew the document just couldn't do.
On the former, I knew I needed a 'quick-reference' to remind myself things like when it was expected to bloom, how big it was supposed to get, if it had a special need like moist soil or to be regularly deadheaded. I also wanted to take better notes as to what was going on with certain plants (did it have aphid issues? should I improve the drainage? were the ducks a little too fond of it?) and note what I'd like to add in the future. Here's a screenshot of the doc I use now, showing what I've got planted in one section of our back garden, where I've also linked to websites that give greater detail on the plants (gardenia.net is a favorite resource for a majority, btw)...
But even with this written down, when you go outside you have a few major challenges with relying on that alone:
What if you don't remember what the plant was in the first place and you have SO many plants that your deductive reasoning isn't helping - or it's not in bloom and you don't recognize the leaves?
What about plants that are either deciduous or die all the way back to the ground? How will you remember the latter is even there (not to mention falsely assuming it died because you didn't know that this is just one that disappears over winter, and yanking it out...ask me how I know!)? And for further additions, if you don't know what the plant is during winter or even spring, how will you know what colors/styles/sizes/etc of plant(s) you want to add, not to mention what organically complements them?
And finally, while this may not apply to everyone, when your husband wants to know what he's looking at as he admires what's in the garden, it'd be pretty darn cool to look right at it and learn on the spot.
So I thought, OK it's time for me to finally get crazy with labeling and get all arboretum-y in my gardens. Plastic plant tags from the nursery are helpful in raised beds, where they usually won't fly away, but for a more stable, permanent identification - as well as a bit classier vibe, not to mention for seed-grown plants which I have many of as well - a good sturdy metal plant tag is where it's at.
Now there are a TON of plant tags out there for sale, and many of them are pre-printed, which is utterly useless in my garden. After all, I need this to reflect what I planted, not what a seller thinks I may have. Kind of like my spice rack and how I finally broke down and bought a labelmaker (because those preprinted labels are generic AF and always missing far too many that I keep in my pantry), getting a bulk order of metal plant tags that I could write on myself was utter perfection.
Along with that, using an oil based paint marker is CRUCIAL to labels that don't fade. Sharpies will fade, y'all, I learned this years ago. Find these for cheap in your craft section of the store or some plant tag sellers actually include these in your order. Count how many plants you have (more than you usually think you have!) then shop around. You can usually find them cheaper in bulk - I got about 200 stainless ones from Planter Earth and they have been AWESOME!
PS - Please please please AVOID the bougie yet remarkably low quality sites like Gardeners Supply (whose service is also atrocious), artist sites like Etsy who take huge cuts from sellers these days (and who now no longer work exclusively with artists as much of their sellers are actually corporations, ugh), and repulsive small-business robbing, environmentally destroying union-busters like Amazon who is THE scum of the fucking earth.
And then go enjoy the plants...!
Comentários