Botanical Garden Quality

Our signs are used for permanently identifying plants and are suitable for heavy-duty, commercial outdoor use by botanical gardens, zoos, colleges, private growers/collectors, nurseries, resorts, amusement parks, golf courses, public parks, malls, etc.

Years ago, we had a 1.5-acre tropical garden in Fallbrook, CA, adjacent to our South Coast Palms nursery. Every time we grew a rare palm or cycad in the nursery, we would plant one in our garden. When we got to over 250 different kinds of palms & cycads in our garden, we realized keeping track of them on 3 X 5 cards in a recipe box wasn’t going to work anymore. Nearly everyone who visited our garden—upon seeing an especially rare plant—would ask, “When did you plant that? How big was it when you planted it? Where did you get it?”

We had a friend who had a huge palm garden in a nearby town and knew he had beautiful 4” x 8” signs on metal stakes identifying most of his plants. We asked him one time where he got his nice signs. He related that he got them from a nearby zoo in trade for rare palms but was disappointed that they wouldn’t do it anymore. The light came on, and we asked him if we started a sign business and could make signs just like the ones he had in his garden, would he buy them from us? He said he’d love to. We found quite a few other people who had big gardens who thought we had a great idea, and Plant Signs was born.

When we sold the nursery and moved to Utah in 2014, we brought the sign business with us.

We have a live palm growing in our yard here in Northern Utah (a Needle Palm, Rhapidophyllum hystrix), allegedly the world’s most cold-hardy palm. It’s extremely slow-growing and survives our snowy winters unprotected.

This home-based business is for sale (time to retire). If anyone loves what Plant Signs has done since 1996, is looking for a nice part-time job, is mechanically handy and not intimidated by technology, and might be interested, Contact Gary for further information. Knowledge of plants is desirable but not required.

Most of our customers are in California, Florida, Texas, and Hawaii, but we have sold signs in all 50 states and about half a dozen countries outside the USA.

We sell our signs to resorts, botanical gardens, plant collectors, parks, museums, zoos, tourist attractions, and many private gardens.

Most of the signs we sell are black with white letters, with the forest green plate as the second most popular color. Private collectors generally buy the 2” X 4” signs, while larger gardens use the 3” X 5” or larger sizes. About 2/3 of the stakes we sell are the frame style, and the rest are the flat-face style. Many customers obtain their signs locally and just get the sign holders from us.