It's one of those perennial gardening conundrums. What do you do with the plant label?

You can't leave it tied on, for as well as disturbing the appearance of the garden (the flickering white colour of most labels is the easiest for the eye to pick out) it also makes it look as though you don't know your plants.

You can't throw them all away as there are times when you do forget the names of some of your herbaceous charges (this is most often the case with plants that other people have bought for you as gifts). I have known people to take photographs of their borders and keep these, together with the plant labels, in photograph albums. Others keep them filed away in a drawer or special box, with notes on the label indicating where the plant was placed in the garden.

My method is to put the plant in the ground and then bury the label in the soil just beneath it. This way I can have a quick check if I need to, but the label remains out of sight. The only drawback to this is that I am one of those people that often moves plants around. This usually happens after I have made an impulse purchase, and then get home to find that I can't locate anywhere suitable for the plant to live. I then end up moving five or six other plants in order to situate the new arrival and rebalance the borders. By the time I have frantically dug up, planted, re-dug up and repositioned all the plants I have lost track of where the labels are.

At Nature's World we have been trying to come up with a solution to just the opposite problem. We have been experimenting with ways of displaying plant labels. We currently have a group of young trainees who for a variety of reasons find it hard to fit in the normal programme of schooling. Over the last few weeks they have been inventing and constructing a variety of alternative labelling methods. As a centre that tries to display and encourage sustainable ways of living we like to re use and recycle products that most people normally consign to the rubbish heap. For example, we receive amputated logs from a local tree surgeon. We have cut some of these into slices and painted, carved or burned names and numbers onto them. These will be screwed into place or drilled and hung up. Old roofing slates have been given a coating of white gloss and then the plant name artfully painted onto that. These can them simply be pushed into the ground. Names have been painted onto large cobbles and broken slate tiles which can be laid at the feet of smaller plants. Clear plastic bottles have been stuffed with messages ready to be hung up around the site. Broken tiles have been made into mosaics, old nails straightened and knocked into patterns, unwanted computer CDs glued together and even letters cut from discarded drinks cans.

It has been a thoroughly enjoyable and interactive process for everyone involved, which hopefully will add to the viewing pleasure and educational value of the gardens.

THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK

Cut back clematis

The summer and autumn flowering clematis (they usually have the larger flowers) can be cut right back down to within one or two feet above the ground. This encourages them to bush out and produce more flowers. It would do them no harm to leave them, but you would end up with long straggly growth with all the flowers right at the top. If you have a spring flowering clematis, leave the pruning until just after the blooms have faded.

Clip ornamental grasses

Most people nowadays leave the dead growth on ornamental grasses over winter to protect the plant from the worst of the frosts. These can be trimmed back now, making sure that you don't catch any of the new emergent growth.

Plant summer flowering bulbs

The large summer bulbs are just starting to appear in the garden centres. They can be planted out in the garden when the soil is not frozen over or saturated.

Published: 25/01/2003