As I began working in the Alum Garden, I knew I wanted to include some form of labels for most of the plants, particularly the most recent additions. I knew from the past two decades planting and dividing a yard full of hostas that if I didn’t label the plants in situ, their names would soon be lost. No matter how carefully I prepared my garden maps, the reality never matched my schematic drawings, assuming I could find the appropriate piece of green graph paper in my garden files.
I have read that the English gardener Gertrude Jekyll wrote the names of plants on stones placed near the corresponding plants–a tactic I found very appealing--but my penmanship is terrible, and I didn’t want to impose on my wife the task of writing so many names on dozens of smooth stones. Plus, I wasn’t sure I had on hand enough smooth stones.
I finally settled on using zinc markers with the common and scientific names produced by an electric label maker. While I would have preferred the scientific name appearing in italics and all but the first letter of the genus in lower case, my label maker could only produce names in one script, either all capitals or all lower case. So I settled on everything in black capital letters, with the scientific name on the top line and a common name on the bottom.
Not everything is labeled. Many plants were in the garden before my arrival, and I don’t trust my ability to ascertain the identity of a particular daylily or cranesbill. I have occasionally gambled on a plant’s identification, but in most instances the old survivors remain anonymous. Many new plants lack a label because we have multiple examples of the same plant–in which case only one individual receives a label, trusting it can serve as a representative for its sisters and brethern.
I suspect many visitors would prefer a more spontaneous, unfiltered encounter with the garden, without the noise of the gray, zinc labels. But Coe is an academic institution, and one of the garden’s missions could be to help a few people discover the names of plants and their flowers while enjoying an afternoon stroll. Perhaps both Clyde and Coe can demonstrate the benefits of mixing pleasure with information.