I agree with both Tom & Greg and I take pictures of the label followed by the plant. I use Kincaid SS markers with cultivar name, my own assigned ID number, Hybridizer, and intro year on a laser printed waterproof label. I have approximately 800 named and noid cultivars in my garden with labels.
Arlyn,
As far as keeping up with all my cultivars, I use a suite of programs (Libre Office) that is similar to "Microsoft Office" but is open source and can be downloaded free. I used to use Excel, but chose to not pay for the new versions for the last several iterations. I maintain my records on a spreadsheet. As I mentioned above, I assign an index number to each cultivar, followed by name, year obtained, obtained from, the bed number(s) it is located in, hybridizer, year of introduction, and a comment field. From this spreadsheet, I can use a "mail merge" feature to print the labels for the markers with any of the spreadsheets contained information. I have linked additional worksheets to this "master" sheet and have sorted one by cultivar name, one by hybridizer, and others by location. In addition, I maintain a map of each bed showing location of each clump (by index number) using a CAD program similar to AutoCAD. There is a drawing module in the Libre Office suite, however, I have not used it as I was already established in the CAD program for quite a few years already. Libre Office also has a data base program that would be preferable to the spreadsheet, however, again I already had been using Excel for many years. A writing program (similar to "Word", and a slide show program similar to "Power Point" is also a part of the suite. The pictures below are samples of the files I use to keep track of everything. My index numbering system currently goes to 802, and I have not yet ordered anything this year. Included in this listing are about 20 of my seedlings that I've re-selected over the past several years.
I noticed that in your post above that you indicated you are a Display Garden. If you would like to become a Display Garden on the TBIS website, just follow the link www.tbisonline.com and complete the form and submit as described. The TBIS is always looking to include more Display Gardens on the web site.
Spreadsheet sample
CAD drawing of iris bed
Picture of iris bed
