Plant labels, handles and tags continue to serve a vital function in the UK horticulture production and retail industries, acting as a key element in plant marketing strategies. The role of plant labels extends beyond basic identification in the garden by offering significant benefits to both consumers and businesses by improving accessibility, enhancing product appeal, fostering informed purchasing decisions and providing ongoing gardener support with plant identification and care information.

Below is a breakdown the role of plant labels, handles and tags into eight basic functions which modern, professional plant label designs can offer:

1. Providing Essential Information to Gardeners

Plant labels, handles and tags deliver critical information, including species name (both common and botanical), care requirements, light and water needs, and hardiness zones. In UK gardens, where climatic conditions vary, this information is essential to help consumers choose plants that will thrive in their specific garden environments. Plant labels support both novice and experienced gardeners by offering clear, concise guidance, reducing the chances of poor plant selection or maintenance errors and providing plant markers for the lifespan of the plant.

2. Facilitating Accurate Identification

Accurate identification is crucial, particularly when distinguishing between similar species or varieties. Clear and well-structured plant , handles and tags assist customers in confidently selecting plants, while avoiding confusion between cultivars that may appear visually similar. In busy garden centres or nurseries, this helps streamline the purchasing process and enhances customer satisfaction, leading to brand engagement and repeat purchases.

3. Supporting Sustainability Initiatives

With sustainability becoming a priority for UK consumers, plant , handles and tags can play a key role in highlighting environmentally responsible practices. As well as being made of recycled and recyclable materials themselves, plant labels can indicate whether plants are peat-free, pollinator-friendly, drought-resistant, or organically grown, addressing growing consumer demand for eco-friendly products. Highlighting these attributes aligns with broader sustainability goals and reinforces a retailer’s commitment to environmental stewardship.

4. Enhancing Aesthetic Appeal and Brand Differentiation

Professional plant labels, handles and tags also contribute to the visual merchandising of plants. Professionally designed, aesthetically pleasing labels, handles and tags not only showcase the plant’s potential, but also strengthen brand identity. High-quality images and branding elements, such as logos and taglines, can distinguish a particular grower or retailer in a competitive market, fostering brand loyalty and recognition among gardening consumers.

5. Driving Impulse Purchases

Well-crafted plant labels can influence consumer behaviour by appealing to emotions and convenience. Descriptions that highlight ease of care, aesthetic benefits, or environmental advantages can persuade undecided shoppers to make a purchase. In this sense, plant labels act as an on-the-spot marketing tool, encouraging impulse buys through effective messaging and design.

6. Integrating with Digital Platforms

As digital integration becomes increasingly important in retail, plant labels can incorporate features such as QR codes or links to websites for additional resources. This allows customers to access more detailed information, videos, or plant care tips via their smartphones, enhancing the in-store experience and offering post-purchase support. This connection to digital resources aligns with modern consumer expectations for convenience and connectivity.

7. Ensuring Compliance with Industry Standards

Plant labels also serve to communicate compliance with regulatory standards within UK horticulture. Plant labels can indicate certification for pest-free plants, compliance with plant health regulations, or the non-invasive status of certain species. This builds trust with consumers, assuring them that the plants in their garden meet required safety and environmental standards.

8. Promoting Local and Seasonal Marketing

Plant labels can be strategically used to promote locally grown plants or highlight those that are in season. By encouraging consumers to buy locally sourced or seasonally appropriate plants, labels can support sustainable purchasing decisions and strengthen the connection between consumers and local horticultural businesses.

 

In the UK, plant labels are far more than simple identifiers. They are powerful marketing tools that inform, engage, and persuade consumers while enhancing brand visibility and supporting sustainable practices.

Through thoughtful design and strategic messaging, plant labels can significantly enhance the overall consumer experience and drive sales, making them a critical component of successful plant marketing solutions and successful gardening experiences.

It is vital to apply these functions sympathetically to the themes and trends that UK Garden Retail Industry current faces.

 

The Importance of Professional Graphic Design and Content

For growers, investing in high-quality graphic design and professional content for plant labels, handles and tags presents an opportunity to enhance their market presence and align with evolving garden retail trends. By focusing on visually appealing and informative label designs, growers can effectively communicate the unique benefits of their plants, such as sustainability, wellness attributes, and suitability for various garden spaces. Professional plant label design creates a stronger connection between the product and the customer, driving sales and building brand loyalty in an increasingly competitive market.

For 2025, trends in retail will centre around sustainability, immersive shopping experiences, technology integration, and space-efficient solutions for urban gardeners. Professional content is crucial for ensuring that labels do more than just display plant names. Well-crafted, concise descriptions can educate consumers on plant care and highlight key selling points like low-maintenance features or eco-friendly qualities. For example, a label with carefully written content about how a plant contributes to biodiversity or air purification speaks directly to the growing number of environmentally conscious customers. With many UK garden retailers moving towards experiential shopping and wellness-focused design, professional content can also engage customers emotionally, helping them envision how plants will improve their gardens and enhance their lifestyle.

Additionally, the visual appeal of plant labels is a vital component of brand differentiation. Investing in professional graphic design ensures that plant labels capture attention with clean, modern designs that reflect both the grower’s brand and the consumer’s desire for aesthetically pleasing products in their home and garden. Thoughtful design choices, such as using high-resolution images of plants at their best, along with creative fonts and layouts, can elevate the product’s overall presentation. Digital-ready labels, incorporating features like QR codes or augmented reality options, further offer consumers the chance to access additional content, making the labels an interactive part of the shopping experience which travels with the plant from retail to garden. This blend of professional content and design not only enhances the plant’s retail presence but also supports garden centres’ broader marketing efforts.

A good plant label partner can help by offering the following services:

Professional UK-Oriented Creative and Marketing Support: providing tailored creative and marketing solutions that cater specifically to the UK horticulture market, offering targeted expertise.

Decades of Experience: They bring extensive experience to the table, likely giving clients confidence in the reliability and quality of the services provided.

Exclusive UK-Oriented Horticultural Content: unique resources such as high-quality photography, images, and detailed care instructions, ensuring the content provided is valuable and specific to horticultural needs.

24/7 Access via Online Portal: Customers can access and order labels at any time, ensuring convenience and flexibility through an online system available 24/7 all year round.

Rapid Artwork Production and Integrated Proofing Management Systems: a cutting-edge system for creating and editing custom artwork quickly, allowing for swift updates or adjustments to designs. The service integrates job management, asset management, and version control, streamlining operations and ensuring consistency across different projects – a major factor in ease-of-life.

 

Production

Of course, putting these ideas into production also requires a specialist production partner. Plant labels can have a long and varied lifespan, with the requirement to look good for a prolonged time in a range of conditions. Look to leverage the extensive supply chain and production expertise of a professional plant label producer to help you to bring the ideal solution to life.

A specialist plant label supplier should have a comprehensive library of shapes and fixtures which have been designed for maximum production yield, therefore lowest cost per unit as well as having been tested with all major pot and tray suppliers, to ensure compatibility and reliability with your specific pots and trays. If you are considering a change of pots and trays, seek advice on how label suppliers can help you adapt your labelling products quickly and easily.

To set print quality standards, look for a partner that works to ISO:12647 Colour Management Standards and uses a professional colour management tool in artwork, pre-press and print production. This will ensure that equipment and processes are frequently tested and calibrated to this standard. Colour can be subjective matter, and Horticultural applications can vary to standard print due to the specialist consumables used, so these tools and standards enable the supplier to manage colour so that it meets expectations in a scientific, objective and satisfactory way.

Moving to printing, these processes should help to minimise make-ready sheets and improve throughput by setting the job profile on press and enabling skilled operators to achieve their profile targets quickly and efficiently across all materials, leading to reduced production waste and consistent quality of output.

The supplier will also have a solid supply chain and network which enables them to use niche materials and inks which meet this Standard. Also, records will be kept at each stage allowing the supplier to revisit previous jobs to ensure repeatable quality over the months and years.

Advancements in finishing mean that many of the processes that used to rely on manual work are now able to be automated. A forward-looking supplier should have (specially developed) machines that enable them to mitigate increased labour costs and availability of labour in line with seasonal demand. Great design and content is no use if the supplier is not able to deliver on time.

 

Material Recommendations for labelling solutions, 2025

For UK horticultural label, handles and tags applications Hortipak recommend:

• Recycled Polypropylene (rPP) – the most widely used and recyclable polymer in Europe, now with a minimum of 40% recycled content by default.
• Eco3 water-resistant board – recycled, recyclable and biodegradable fibre-based solution specially developed for horticultural applications. The only certified plastic-free material on offer and market leading resistance to water ingress.

N.B. coated boards allow ingress through the edges of the label which are more likely to result in early product failure.

Details on each can be found below:

Materials: Hortipak rPP

Where durability, rigidity and cost-effectiveness are required, a custom polypropylene blend is the optimum choice for plant labels, handle and tags.

Polypropylene is one of the easily recycled and therefore most widely recycled materials in the UK and Europe. Where product lifespan is important, this type of specialist plastic is typically a more sustainable choice than board alternatives.

rPP performs better in most production horticulture and garden environments than any alternatives.

Material should also contain a minimum of 30% recycled polypropylene by default which is over and above of the UK guidelines, including the UK Plastic Packaging Tax. Mineral additives are also added to the blend in order to maintain a stable colour, rigidity and lifespan.

Look for a supplier that offers the following:

• All polypropylene production waste is recycled in the UK.
• Avoids the use of PS, PET or PVC for these products due to the comparative difficulties with recycling these materials in the UK.
• Works with sustainability experts including WRAP.

These specialisms are achieved by working closely with suppliers over the long-term to maintain a consistency in quality as well as a joint approach to sustainability.

Examples of products where rPP is the optimum choice:

• Handles, which require a durable material in order to bear weight
• Stick-ins, which require higher degrees of rigidity, water-resistance and a shelf-life of more than 6 months, including usage by the retailer and gardening consumers
• Lock ins and tray labels which need to be water-resistant and non-tear, as well as having a shelf-life of more than 6 months including usage by the retailer and gardening consumers
• Tags and clip-on labels providing a flexible solution across a range of pots and trays.
• Staked plant tags and strung plant tags, which need to be non-tear, need to be water-resistant, as well as having a shelf-life of more than 6 months including usage by the retailer and gardening consumers
• Long-life POS and packaging which requires durability and water-resistance, for example for use on trolleys which are moved during the production and sales process.

Although it is possible to print on 100% recycled polypropylene, adding more recycled content to a specialist blend for horticulture is not without risks and challenges. It its ‘virgin’ form, the material blend is optimised for its intended use for plant labels. Due to the fact that supply of recycled material back into the supply chain is not subject to specific rules on quality and separation, as recycled materials are added, this in effect contaminates that optimum blend and can introduce quality issues. If batches are rejected due to associated inconsistencies in quality, then this can undo weeks, months or even years of work to introduce more recycled content. These ‘unintended consequences’ of change must be mitigated by careful development and testing with the supply chain. There is also a shortfall of recycled content across Europe – there is not enough availability of recycled content of good enough quality for print to move much beyond the 30%-40% recycled content average in any consistent and meaningful way so, although this material can be offered in small batches, it is not likely to contribute to overall sustainability in 2025.

Materials: Water Resistant Boards Board

Fibreboards which show high water-resistance are very rare. This is because the edges of the product are exposed during cutting, allowing water to wick into the body of the product. This is typically mitigated by adding plastic or oil-based products to prevent water-ingress, which defeats the object of using board such as PE coated paperboard.

Look for a board with the following criteria

• 100% compostable
• 100% biodegradable
• 100% recyclable
• Fully recyclable in any Paper Waste Stream
• BS Euro Standard 3177: Water Vapour Permeability, (MVTR)
• Fully Sustainable – PEFC: Global Forestry Sustainability Chain of Custody
• Certified ‘Zero Plastic & Micro Plastic’
• EN13432BioCertified
• Biodegradable in 12 weeks*
• Carbon Balanced (World Land Trust)

Recommended applications for Water Resistant Boards

• Labels which are applied at despatch rather than in the nursery during growing
• Tray labels without lock fittings
• Small format packaging
• Shelf edge strips
• Short life products
• Tags

However, board products do not perform sufficiently for labels which are expected to remain in growing media, such as stick-in. Tags and some lock-ins could be used successfully on either material. If in doubt, test with samples.

Summary

Garden retail design in the UK is evolving to meet the demands of a modern, eco-conscious, and tech-savvy customer base. For 2025, trends will centre around sustainability, immersive shopping experiences, technology integration, and space-efficient solutions for urban gardeners. These developments are transforming garden centres from traditional retail spaces into multifunctional destinations where consumers can not only shop but also learn, relax, and enjoy nature. By embracing these trends, garden retailers can stay competitive and relevant in an ever-changing market.

Professional plant labels and POS solutions are indispensable tools that align with and enhance the design trends set to dominate UK garden retail in 2025. Whether supporting sustainability efforts, creating immersive experiences, or integrating technology into the shopping process, these tools help retailers provide a seamless, informative, and engaging customer experience.

Bringing all of this together effectively requires a plant labelling partner with a deep knowledge of a wide range of marketing, content, design, supply chain and production processes.

By leveraging clear, flexible, and innovative labelling and POS systems, commercial growers and garden centres can not only improve customer satisfaction but also drive sales and build stronger brand loyalty in an evolving market.