Plantus Labellus Ikealloides

Plant labels are annoying things. Flimsy bits of plastic that get lost, break, or become illegible, or just blow away. I'd like to have lovely slate ones, or nice pretty wooden painted ones, but like so many other things I'd like, I just never get round to making them and I certainly don't want to be paying out the money charged at fancy garden shops for them. So I was very pleased with myself when I came up with the idea of re-using something which would otherwise have been binned.

I recently installed a new venetian blind**in the bathroom, and since it came from Ikea, where everything is one size, it was miles too long and I had lots of slats leftover. The slats seem to be made of some kind of wood, or mdf, or but are thin enough to be reasonably easy to cut. They are white and about two inches or so wide, so ideal for large, legible, garden labels. I was worried that they might disintegrate in water so I tried cutting one to size, and have soaked it in a glass of water for a few days and so far it looks ok.

So hopefully, this year, no more peering at illegible bits of plastic and wondering whether it was peas or beans I sowed in that bed last week.

**We are very lucky to have views from our windows onto open fields, with nothing more than the odd dog walker passing by. However this applies to our bathroom windows as well, which are clear glazed, not frosted as most modern bathrooms are, I suppose because no one went past the garden hedge when the house was built.  But the village has grown and there are more people about than there used to be, and a not insignificant number of dog walkers pass through the field on the other side of our hedge, especially first thing in the morning.   Anyway, to avoid giving an inadvertent surprise, not to say a heart attack, to Major Fanshawe as he passes a gap in the hedge whilst taking his early morning constitutional, a venetian blind seemed to be the solution.