It's probably fair to say that most of us would be hard pressed to name every single plant growing in our gardens.

Some of our plants may have come to us with the garden, or been given to us without a name. Labels have a tendency to fade, so that even carefully labelled plants may gradually become nameless.

Memories too have a tendency to fade, with once familiar names sitting tantalisingly on the tip of the tongue, but stubbornly refusing to materialise.

Why should it be so important to know the names of our garden plants? We're not running a botanic garden after all and, if we don't mind, then who is to know?

To me, not knowing the name of a plant is like not being introduced to someone you've just met and would like to get to know it seems somehow rude and slightly ignorant. To forget a plant name that was once familiar is like failing to remember the name of a close friend - quite distressing!

In more practical terms, a nameless plant cannot be connected to others in the same plant family or genus. You can't look it up in a plant dictionary to see what soil conditions it prefers, whether it likes to grow in sun or shade, and when it should be pruned.

If you are choosing new plants from a nursery catalogue, you can't tell which plants you already have, and you could end up ordering duplicates.

And if you give away seeds, cuttings or divisions you will have to admit that your plants are anonymous, leaving the recipients to hunt for the names themselves. Lost names, especially those of cultivated varieties, can be hard to trace.

I have started to keep a little black book of the names of the plants in my garden. It's really an address book, but it serves very well to record the names of my plants in alphabetical order, together with where they came from and when I planted them.

An alternative would have been to draw a plan of each flower bed, marking the names of plants where they grow. There are even some good computer programmes available for recording plant collections. I don't think it matters what sort of an aide memoire' you use, so long as it works for you and your plants.

My plant of this week is Helleborus 'Pink Beauty', newly purchased from Beetham Nurseries, near Milnthorpe, where they have a mouth-watering selection of Hellebores for sale.

The name and the label both gave me clues as to how to look after it. Further research revealed that its full name is Helleborus x ericsmithii Pink Beauty', a hybrid between Helleborus x sternii and H. argutifolius. H. x sternii is itself a hybrid between H. lividus and H. niger quite a complicated parentage!

Jobs this week...

If conditions are dry enough, lawns will benefit from a good raking to remove thatch and moss.

Give fruit trees and bushes a topdressing of organic fertiliser, or a mulch of well-rotted compost or manure.

Prune established shrubs such as aucuba, laurel, and witch hazel. Cut out completely any diseased, crossing or badly shaped branches, then remove up to one third of the oldest branches to ground level, leaving an open, healthy framework.