Welcome to Kilbeg House Garden: Plant Labels

It can be frustrating to visit a garden and not be able to identify a plant. For the benefit of visitors and ourselves, we decided to label at least some of the plants in the garden. We wanted our labels to have the correct botanical format, although there doesn't appear to be a single standard.

We started by looking around for commercial suppliers of labels. There are not many, and their labels are expensive (around £5 per label). So we looked into the feasibility of engraving our own labels. After doing some research we discovered relatively cheap, hobby quality, laser engraving machines which would cost less and give us the ability to produce any sort of label.

The machines are almost all Chinese and come in a sort of kit form. There is almost everything you need but you need to supply a few extra bits (exhaust fan to vent fumes, small water pump for the laser cooler, small air pump to blow debris away from the laser beam cutting point). It greatly helps to have some technical or engineering ability. There are no operating or assembly instructions. Safety is always an issue as the machine has fast moving parts, a 40W laser beam, high voltage (20KV), circulating water and there is a potential fire hazard from the beam setting fire to whatever is being engraved.

Our labels use three layer acrylic sheets with a white inner layer sandwiched by thin black layers (Traffolyte). The laser beam burns off the thin black layer and is driven by a computer to move left/right up/down on/off to create the text. We do a sheet of sixteen labels at a time which can take over an hour. The computer is set to finish the session by using a slightly higher power to cut any required fixing holes and to slice the sheet into individual labels.

Some labels need to be mounted on a ground spike. We buy in plastic angle head plant labels and use two-sided sticky pads to fix our labels on to them. So far that has worked well.

The high price of commercial labels is much easier to understand having gone through the steep learning curve of buying, commissioning and operating the engraving system, but we are pleased to have the flexibility.