When we bought our house 3 years ago, it came with a large assortment of very old plants – the original owner was a big Arboretum supporter, so we’ve been told.  One of the first days we were there, a neighbor came over and told us we had a tree in the front yard worth $60K!  Sweet!  I thought he meant this one:

But no, he meant a regular big old maple tree.  I’m guessing we’ll never see that $60K, since it’d be a little hard to remove and transplant that beast.  There’s also a hot pink rhodie TREE, bigger than our house, tall enough to stand under, and lots of miscellaneous shrubs.

Sadly, I only know what a few of them are called. And now that we are adding our own plants, there’s a lot to keep track of.  Hence, my need for a labeling system.  I’ve been doing some research into the options.  I want something good-looking and long-lasting.

There’s the tried and true white plastic sticks you write on with a Sharpie and end up replacing constantly.  Some people do the same thing with wooden sticks – popsicle sticks or tongue depressors.  Not quite the style I’d like.

Which leads me to the tags made of metal of some sort, usually either zinc, aluminium or copper.  From what I can tell, the zinc and aluminium ones are the most versatile when it comes to the actual labeling – you can use any sort of permanent pen, though most people recommend a Nursery Gardening Pen for longer durability.  I like these big boys for bigger plants:

And for smaller plants, these will do the trick:

Some folks use an actual Label maker to print out little plastic labels to put on them.  While I like that idea, I’m not about to drop $60 on a “garden label maker” – I wonder if a regular one would work just as well.  Or I might try print out labels from my computer and decoupaging them onto the metal.  And SOMEDAY, I’m going for these…

In the meantime, any other suggestions from the gardening world?  You know I’m not good about waiting to start a project!