Mar 04, 2025 by Mark Dingley
Are your plant labels accurate and easy to read? Mistakes in plant labelling can lead to customer confusion, operational inefficiencies and even damage your business’s reputation.
Whether it’s tags on plants, sleeves, bulb cards, seed packets or printed pots, having clear and accurate labelling is essential. Labels don’t just tell customers what they’re buying – they build trust, show professionalism and ensure compliance with industry standards. They also play a vital role in traceability, which is critical for business operations and customer confidence.
Even seasoned growers and nurseries can fall into common labelling pitfalls. We’ve put together this guide to help you identify and avoid these mistakes. In this article, we explore key mistakes and provide actionable tips to help you improve your plant labelling practices.
Labels have multiple purposes for plant growers and nurseries, they:
Often these purposes need to be balanced on a single label, which can be a challenge for nurseries and growers.
Plants are often displayed in outdoor environments, which are subject to weather conditions such as sunlight, rain and humidity. Labels that fade, tear or degrade quickly in these environments can lead to misidentified plants, frustrated customers – and lost sales.
For example, labels exposed to harsh sunlight may fade and become illegible, leaving customers unsure what they’re buying, where to plant it, or how to care for it. So they well may not buy it.
The Plant Industry guidelines recommend that labels must not fade or be able to be rubbed off in normal conditions, so it’s critical to take steps to ensure your plant labels stay looking good.
How to avoid: Invest in durable, weather-resistant labelling substrates. Look for options such as UV-coated paper or synthetic weather-resistant materials that can endure outdoor exposure while aligning with your sustainability goals. It’s worth running tests on small batches to ensure your chosen materials hold up in real-world conditions before rolling them out on your products. There are also specialist inks designed to prevent fading in sunlight, including UV-resistant inks.
Poor print quality not only means your label can look unprofessional, but the print will also be hard to read and may fade quickly.
This causes two problems:
How to avoid: Poor print quality can be caused by many things, such as a dirty printhead, low-quality ink, incorrect printer settings, temperature changes and more. This means you must keep on top of printer maintenance and put manual checks in place to ensure good print quality. Choose a label printer that is easy to maintain, such as the Matthews Evolabel. You can self-service the printer to change the wearable parts in less than a minute.
When barcode labels don’t comply with industry standards, it can cause significant disruption in the supply chain and at point of sale.
The print contrast between the barcode and the background may be too low, or there might not be clear quiet zones on both sides of the barcode, meaning the barcode cannot be scanned. Non-compliant barcodes can also lead to retailers rejecting stock, which makes for an expensive mistake.
How to avoid: Choose a printer that can print barcodes that fully comply with standards set by GS1 Australia. Matthews Evolabel is a label printer applicator (LPA) designed for ease of use and maintenance. You can edit messages easily on the colour touch screen. It can also apply labels to the variable circular surfaces and different sizes of plant pots.
Failing to leverage modern labelling technologies can lead to inefficiencies in labelling processes and missed opportunities to engage customers.
For example, a traditional label without a QR code means you could be cramming too much information onto labels and missing opportunities to provide the additional information customers crave.
How to avoid: Integrate technology such as QR codes into your labels. QR codes can direct customers to extra information online – for example plant care guides and videos – without taking up valuable packaging space. Partnering with an expert such as Matthews Australasia can help streamline these integrations and improve your overall labelling efficiency.
Getting your plant labelling right doesn’t have to be complicated. Remember the number-one rule: labels must look good – and stay looking good. This means choosing a label printer that prints compliant barcode labels, selecting label materials that suit your environment, and keeping a close eye on your print quality. With these steps, you’ll avoid the common pitfalls and present your nursery or brand as professional, reliable and ready to grow.
Matthews Australasia has worked with commercial growers and nurseries of all sizes to design and implement intelligent labelling solutions that integrate seamlessly to drive efficiency, accuracy and cost-effective processes in the supply chain. As your business grows, we can help you with stand-alone print and apply solutions (manual or automated) and networked product code management solutions, including labelling with plant tags.
Contact us to talk about your labelling needs.