"adamjohn" wrote in message

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.

I notice that you are in the UK so it might help if you ask this question in
the uk.rec.gardening newsgroup too as that group will give you more specific
info relating to the UK than this ng can. If you can, don't post through
Garden banter but through a more accepted newsreader as it's not popular in
that group (although I have no idea why). I've learned lots from that ng
and loves identifying plants so if you can take pics of plants you want
identified and post them to something like photobucket and give the URL so
posters can see the plant you will get lots of help there.

I'd also support the advice given by someone else about studying
Horticulture. Other than that it just takes lots of time and effort on your
part to learn. One thing I would recommend is buying an illustrated
horticultural dictionary as once you know the terms to describe something
then it also helps you to ask the right terms when using a search engine.

I've found the UK magazine "The English Garden" is very good as a general
resource on plants in general garden use as it does plant profiles and is
very good at identifying plants in pics by their botanical names and I can
then trawl the internet to read mroe about them.

The books by Roger Phillips or by him in association with Martyn Rix are
also a wonderful resource for plant identification.