• Signs can be used to identify garden plants.Hemera Technologies/Photos.com/Getty Images
  
  Signs serve many functions in a garden. A sign can help you identify the type of herb, flower or plant growing in a garden. A sign can also point you to various parts of a large garden. Signs can also be a whimsical part of garden art that showcases the gardener's personality. When you are painting a sign, you can put any number of sayings or slogans on it.
  
  

Identifiers

• In community gardens or family gardens, smaller plots such as square-foot garden spaces may belong to individual gardeners. One way to tell these plots apart and mark ownership of them is to post signs with the name of the gardener who cares for the plot. Children who have their own gardens can paint their names on signs in brightly colored paint to identify a garden as theirs. Adults can create signs that help them to identify particular plants, such as cultivars of tomatoes or different varieties of herbs placed in the same garden plot. Some examples include a sign near snapdragons that says "Beware of snap dragons" or one among your roses reading "Don't complain that roses have thorns. Be thankful that thorns have roses." If you are growing plants such as bleeding hearts, place a sign near the plant that says "A beautiful garden is a work of heart."
  
  

Themes

• A garden sign can fit the theme of a garden. For example, if you have built a toad garden complete with toad homes and a water feature to attract toads, a sign that says "Welcome to Toadville" will fit the theme of the toad village. If your garden is a memorial to a departed family member, a garden plaque can notify visitors of this fact. A rustic sign made of wood and hand-painted with imprecise brush strokes can fit the theme of a country garden complete with wildflowers, especially if it says that "Despite the gardener's best intentions, nature will improvise."
  
  

Slogans

• For many gardeners, the enjoyment of growing things is the only theme that a garden needs. For these gardeners, simple signs with slogans such as "Welcome to the garden" can help make visitors feel more at home. Popular sayings for these garden signs include lines of poetry about gardening or famous quotes about gardening. Some examples are "Friends are flowers in the garden of life," or Henry David Thoreau's quote that "Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw."