Signs can point you in the right direction and offer important information. They can also make you laugh. Add some levity to your garden by installing a few strategically placed signs. Humorous signs can give your garden that extra something special. Signs also give you a chance to express your personality. And they don’t need watering or pruning.
Here are a few sign ideas sure to give you and your garden guests a good chuckle.
Croplifters Will Be Propagated
This was my first introduction to funny signs. I spied it several years ago in the centuries old
Chelsea Physic Garden. It’s an apothecaries’ garden located in London dating back to 1673. There they grew, and still do, medicinal herbs.
I’m not sure when they hung the sign at the Chelsea, but obviously someone (perhaps under the influence of a medicinal plant from the garden) had a good sense of humor. I now have this sign hanging in my garden where it’s readily visible to visitors. It always gets a good laugh. For young ones who see the sign, it offers a chance for a
botany lesson when they ask (with some trepidation) what propagated means.
Psycho Path
I ran across this sign with its marvelous play on words during the annual
Garden Writers Association Symposium in Atlanta last year. The sign pointed to a
lovely garden path that while a bit carefree and spontaneous, never did get spooky or scary. I have to admit that I continued to giggle for quite some time after running into that sign.
Now Entering the Seedy Part of Town
Talk to my neighbors when I’ve been too busy writing about gardening to actual
do some gardening of my own, and they might agree with this sign. This is another great play on words that I saw in an Atlanta garden. The landscape was a well-manicured one, which made the juxtaposition of the words on the sign and the garden even more comical.
Gardeners Know all the Good Dirt
My sister, Katie, got me this sign for my birthday one year. Having been in the gardening community for quite some time, I have to say that this double entendre is fairly accurate. While you learn gardening secrets from a master gardener, you’ll most likely hear all about the secret life of the crazy next door neighbor.
In our defense, we gardeners just can’t help ourselves. For one thing, we’re outside at odd hours of the day and night—so we see a lot of what’s going on in the neighborhood. Carefully inspecting plants to see if they require fertilizer or need a repotting has also developed in us great observational powers. And then information just seems to just come to us—like the
birds, butterflies and bees that land in our gardens.
Would You Break the Rules Here?
While the sign itself is funny, I really like the photographer’s comment. It’s hard to tell if the sign was installed because someone did indeed break the rules, or if they’re trying to avoid a lawsuit. Either way, the sign can’t help but make you smile.
Julie Bawden-Davis is a garden writer and master gardener, who since 1985 has written for publications such as Organic Gardening, The American Gardener, Wildflower, Better Homes and Gardens and The Los Angeles Times. She is the author of 10 books, including Reader’s Digest Flower Gardening, Fairy Gardening, The Strawberry Story Series, and Indoor Gardening the Organic Way, and is the founder of HealthyHouseplants.com. Her backyard is a Certified Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.
