Plant Labels

It was a lovely warm afternoon in the HDRG.  After a few minutes hammering in the new metal labels, I had to shed my pullover.   When I first placed them last week, I thought to angle them in the manner of the current generation of plastic labels.  Those have a smart 45° tilt to make it easier for the garden visitor to read.  

But these metal labels with their 15" stakes are orthogonal.  It was either hammer them in at an angle for readability or vertical placement for uniformity.  In the end, uniformity trumped readability, in large part due to the ease of reading a vertically placed label and due to the esthetically pleasing arrangement that it made.

Also, last season's metal labels in the Pollinator Pavilion are also vertically placed.  If the northern half of the garden had angled labels and the southern half had vertical labels, eventually we'd have a great nonconformity where they met.  

It didn't take long to pull up the angled labels and relocate them.  A carpenter's square let me quickly measure off 6" from the curb of the path.  The recent irrigation of the beds meant that I could usually push them in by hand until they were 3-4" high.  A handful were in hard-packed soil or had roots down below interfering.  For those, my handy rubber mallet did the trick.  

Finishing up quickly, I then walked the perimeter berms and borders, taking notes on which plants need labels.  Those will be in the next order.  Stay tuna'ed.