Hi,

I work as a Gardener doing mainly manual jobs such as lawncare, hedge trimming etc but I am becoming more interested in expanding my horticultural knowledge.
I allready have a descent knowledge of most of the common garden plants, however some clients will have gardens full of obscure flowers which I have no idea what they are and prefer not to reveal my lack of knowledge by asking. I would like to be able to look them up from photos but I have found this is very difficult to do with books or online archives because you only have vague visual characteristics to go on which can't readily be looked up in an index. Paging through a book of plants I haven't found to be much help because ussually there is only one image of each plant which is often either a close up the foliage or a picture of the whole plant, when I think you really need both to identify a plant, also they frequently show the plant in full bloom which it ussually isn't when you are trying to identify it. Also going through 1000 pages of plants every time you want to identify one is a bit of a 'needle in a haystack' method.

So my question is, is there any kind of systematic approach to getting to know plants which enthusiasts/proffesionals use or is it just a case of 'picking it up' from asking other people, labels in garden centers, botanical gardens etc. Any useful weblinks or reccomended books would be most appreciated. Thanks.