Our schoolyard habitat is designed with native Texas plants chosen for their wildlife value and drought-hardiness, plus a few herbs thrown in for sensory value. It’s really meant to be an educational garden for the kids and a demonstration garden for the community, so labeling the plants well is critical for everyone to get the most out of it.
But money doesn’t grow on trees (not even on a money tree, darn it). I opted to create labels on the computer and laminate them, then attach them to metal markers with a hot-glue gun.
Each plant is identified with common name and scientific name. The labels have a variety of symbols on them. The Texas symbol, of course, is meant to show people which plants are native to our fine state. For the few non-natives, the plants are identified with an herb symbol or a sun for “drought-hardy.”
But additional symbols on each label identify the wildlife value of the plant, whether it be a hummingbird favorite, a pollinator attractor, a caterpillar larval host plant, or a seed- or berry-producing plant for the birds. Some plants qualify for more than one wildlife symbol.
Which of our plants had the highest wildlife value?
Coral honeysuckle wins — not only is it a hummingbird and butterfly/bee plant with its red tubular flowers, but it’s a larval host to the Spring Azure butterfly and the Snowberry Clearwing moth, and it provides berries that birds enjoy.
I figure that in general visiting adults will get the most out of the native TX symbols and the plant IDs, but both kids and adults will look at the wildlife symbols. And that’s when they’ll really start to connect those plants to what they offer our birds and insects.
How long will they last? No idea. But so far I’ve created about 70 labels — a pretty cost-effective way to produce such large quantities.
Now ask me if I label any of my plants at home. Ha. I’m lucky if I don’t manage to lose the markers that come in the pot when I buy a new plant! I can’t tell you how many plants I haven’t planted because I can’t ID them anymore.
Great labels. Wish I was that organized/motivated.
Christine in Alaska
I love this idea! I’m working on getting a school garden plot going for next fall (we are renovating a building for the Logic/Rhetoric schools — like Jr. High and High School), which will be veggies mostly. But I could totally use this idea, but might have different info on it. And I can always work towards having a plot more like yours later on…. Oh, so many ideas, so little time!
Hi Meredith,
I’ve been looking for inexpensive plant markers for the Elderhaven butterfly-hummingbird garden and finally ran a Google search on “plant markers, Austin, TX” and surprise! your listing was the second one that came up. Your markers are beautiful!