Sushi skewers may not be the most obvious of horticultural materials but they are successfully forming a key component of Kirton Farm Nurseries’ newly designed labels for its The Hairy Pot Plant Company retail range.
The bamboo skewers have had their shape and length adjusted, and their points blunted to minimise the risk of injury, by the Winchester-based nursery – which has also worked closely with Floramedia to develop the printed, plastic, top part of the label product.
Derek Taylor, managing director of the nursery, explains: “The plastic, top part of the product contains a flower image on the front and the plant, pot, and barcode information on the reverse. This top part [of the label] then threads onto our specially-designed bamboo skewers, onto which we can print any retail prices that might be required.” He added that the new bamboo-based labels, launched earlier this year, have been designed to be more practical, and create a much more uniform display, than the labels it previously used for its The Hairy Pot Plant Company products – which feature cottage-style plants in “hairy” coir pots.
Taylor said: “Although initial investment in the new label and skewer stock was quite high, we have improved the appearance and practicality of our plant labelling enormously. The long, solid skewers ensure much easier and more robust insertion into the compost – which had become an issue with the shorter, bendy, label designs we had previously been using. It makes for a more practical label in the retail plant areas, as well as making life easier in dispatch on the nursery.”
He added: “There is also a lot more information incorporated on the label so reducing other extra labelling costs we used to incur – and we now have much greater uniformity of display rather than the wide collection of different label designs we used to have to use.”
Taylor also said that he has arranged for Paignton (Devon)-based Longcombe Labels to produce A4-sized templates so that the nursery can carry out small print runs of the new designs as and when it needs to. He said: “Although it’s more expensive to print our own, we minimise waste by just printing these on demand as the orders are processed.”