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 in our garden, we realized keeping track of them on 3×5 cards in a recipe box wasn’t going to work anymore. Nearly everyone who visited out garden, on 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”x8” 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 all bummed because they wouldn’t do it anymore. The light came on and we asked him that if we bought an engraving machine and if we could make signs just the way 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 palm gardens who thought we had a great idea, and Plant Signs was born.
When we retired from the Palm Nursery and moved to Utah in 2014 (to be near family), we brought the sign business with us. We had several workshop rooms built onto our custom-built home that we use for the business.
We actually 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 is extremely slow growing, but actually survives our snowy winters unprotected.
The owner hopes to fully retire before he reaches the age of 80 in a few years. If anyone loves what Plant Signs has done since 1996 and is looking for a nice side hustle, is somewhat mechanically handy, and might be interested in buying this home-based business, contact Gary for further information. A knowledge of plants is desirable, but not required.
Some interesting facts about our sign business:
Most of our customers are in California, Florida, Texas & Hawaii, but we have sold sign 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 the second most popular color. Private collectors generally buy the 2×4 size signs and bigger gardens use the 3×5 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 sign locally and just by the sign holders from us.
