Gardens
Name dropping
Ursula Buchan
0 ne of the more unfortunate conse- quences of being a professional gardener, particularly one partly trained in a botani- cal institution, is that I must always know the name of a plant. It is a wretched com- pulsion, but one I am now probably too old to overcome. Although I am deeply envi- ous of those who neither know nor care what their plants are called and only say, airily, when one asks, which one does: 'Oh, my neighbour gave me that whatjermacal- lit; pretty; isn't it?', I know that I cannot properly concentrate on its attributes, nor study it closely, until I know its name.
My psyche was kinked long ago by the terrors of weekly Plant Identification Tests so that, even now, I approach a plant which looks at a distance unfamiliar, with eyes cast to the ground, searching for the label which will tell me what it is. In my youth, this was also a kind of scalp-hunting, I sup- pose, but it became an ingrained habit, which I make only sporadic attempts to break. My excuse is that, as a journalist, I cannot write about plants if I cannot name them, but that is convenient ex post facto reasoning.
Sometimes, these days, I am painfully thwarted. Some owners of open gardens do not label their plants, either because it is too time-consuming and expensive to do so or because the tags are so regularly stolen, usually by people who have already appro- priated cuttings and who would like to keep a record of what they have pinched. Others think that, aesthetically, it is better not to turn their garden into a plant ceme- tery with so many mini-headstones, and I can see their point, although anyone who has ever tried to get hold of a plant that they have seen on a garden visit, will remember the acute frustration of not being able to discover what it was.
Most normal people are not too both- ered about labelling in their own garden. But I am condemned by circumstance to a lifetime of labelling, if only because my memory now would make a sieve look impenetrable. Over the years, I have tried many kinds of label and marker, but rarely found them satisfactory. The problem lies in an unholy alliance between birds, the weather and the soil. The birds pull out the labels, and the rain mixed with splashed soil washes off the marking. The most widely available labels are made of white plastic, but neither soft lead pencil nor `permanent' waterproof felt-tip marker will last forever on them. Before the name has become engraved like Calais on my heart, there will be nothing left on the label but an indecipherable blur. Spitting on them and rubbing just makes it worse, in case you wondered.
I must have tried most methods of mark- ing labels in my time, the most laborious being the etching of a black-veneered label with a thin metal stylus. So time-consuming was the process that even I had managed to learn the name by the time I had finished its label. Moreover, any label made of plas- tic will degrade and break in time, and the flexible ones sent out by nursery growers on rose bushes, for example, break off infu- riatingly two years down the road, with only part of the name intact. I am left wonder- ing whether a label with the legend Rose, `The P ...' refers to The Pilgrim', 'The Prince', 'The Prioress' or 'The Painter'.
I think, however, I have finally found the answer, thanks to Mary Keen, who suggest- ed I write names on small, black labels, with a Pilot Silver Marker (Very Fine Point). Both tag and name last an impres- sively long time and, because black absorbs rather than reflects light, the label is easier on the eye than white plastic. Moreover, as the silver marking is waterproof, the labels can be almost completely buried in the ground, and only referred to if necessary.
For roses, which require something rather larger, I have invested in satisfyingly heavy zinc labels from Wartnaby Gardens (Melton Mowbray, LE14 3HY), which can be written on with a soft lead pencil, or an acid marking ink which they also sell, and are old-fashioned enough in appearance for people to think that they look decorative.
Of course, another solution would be not to label plants at all, but instead write their names in a loose-leaf folder, divided into sections according to garden location, and accompanied by the simple plans for plant- ings I drew up in the first place, and ones showing any major alterations since. In this way, I could avoid the risk of turning the garden into a graveyard. Even more impor- tant, however, I need not even attempt to straighten out my psyche.
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