Are you looking for some cute and fun diy garden marker ideas to replace those boring white tags that come with your plants by default? Having trouble remembering what you planted at the beginning of the season and need a creative way to get better organized? In this post we’ll share them right here, some that I enjoyed spending a day doing.
Best of all, you don’;t need fancy tools either. Some of the things you’ll need are probably right there in your craft room or kitchen pantry, or laundry room. SO let’s dive right in with some of the cute tags I’m making, and some I’ve seen when doing a little research.
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Using Popsicle Sticks to Make Plant Tags
By far, this is one of the easiest way to make your own diy plant labels. Do you save your old popsicle sticks after enjoying a nice frozen treat and need a fun or practical way to use them? Well look no further than this! Besides that, the only other thing you’d need is a few permanent markers (preferably thin line to make it more legible) to write the name of the plant on it. You can write horizontally or vertically, or even use a stamp instead.
Additionally, you could embellish it with an icon of the crop in question if you like.
This is a “bare bones” approach, but you get the idea.
Wine Cork Plant Tags
I love this idea, too, and it’s seems pretty popular. If you collect various wine corks for nostalgia reasons, here’s a great way to upcycle them. Also, get some bamboo skewers -those long skinny sticks we use for grilling kebabs and other culinary dishes – and stick the sharp end through the end of the cork.
Assuming there is space to write on the sides of them (with time, if there is any printing on the corks, it may fade) Use a fine-line Sharpie pen to write the name of the plant on the side. Easy-peesy!
I wanted to do something like this myself, but found that I only had, like 2 corks, and one was too small to write on.
Plant Markers Using Beads
Beads can be great for this…if you can find some big enough to write on legibly (think flat cabochon style, square, or the “pony beads”) I have always loved the Alpha-beads. They’re not easy to find, but they’re so much fun. I used to use them to make jewelry with fun names or messages. I still have a collection of them…these are from a collection I’ve had for over 10 years.
Here I am sorting through them to see if I have enough (and the right combination) to spell out all the names of the different plants I have set out. Unfortunately, I came up short on the As and Es…which I need a LOT more of, Peas, beans, tomatoes, basil, carrots, squash,…you can figure it out from here.
I only ended up making three, after I went through all those letter s with a fine tooth comb to see what I had letters for. For some reason, there were 5 or 6 Xs, Qs and Zs…I think I speak for everyone when I ask, “Why??” LOL
No worries, as i have another new alpha-bead set,
and each letter is plentiful, from the common (like Es) to uncommon (Zs) Here I am using one of those plastic party trays to sort my beads…try this hack sometime, it’s a GREAT way to make bead arranging a cinch!
After I had all my plant names’ corresponding letters picked out, I chose an assortment of beads with openings wide enough to fit the skewer ends without slipping down. (Most of them had tiny holes and wouldn’t fit at all.).With a dab of solvent glue, each bead stayed in place. Then I threaded the beads onto each bamboo skewer, and to finish it off and keep the beads from moving on the other end, I used needle-nose pliers, and 14-gauge craft wire (A crimp bead can work for this purpose, too.)
Sometimes I make the end of the wire a little fancy and put a curlicue, and another bead on the end. For those of you with elevated beds, you can put a beaded tag for each plant type on one skewer. I did that for all four of my beds – sorta like a “filing” system for your garden.
Using Clay
And let’s not forget my other favorite medium, oven bake clay, if you can’t find any good beads or you prefer another medium, you could create eye-catching tags for your plants from polymer clay, which you could etch or emboss the plant name into prior to baking.
You’ll need some polymer clay in your choice of colors – I would spring for natural, earthy colors in the green, brown,yellow and orange family (think 70s decor…). If you want to stick with white clay (I’m using Sculpey Original
) you can give them a really pretty swirled, natural effect with pastel chalks.
Finally: a small knife, toothpick, stamps if you’ve got them.
- Knead your clay and break it into individual pieces for each color. Using white or translucent clay? Follow this method to make each piece a different color.
- Roll clay slabs out flat, about a fourth of an inch thick is idea., and cut into strips, or you could make bead shapes.
- Use a stamp with alphabet letters or words to emboss the plant name into the different clay slabs, press stamp into top of slab so it will be showing when later on its inserted in the ground.
- Bake clay pieces, slabs, etc. in your home oven… ( Never done that before? All you need to know is right here! )
You can write the letters on each bead, but I go for the embossed and beveled look and used a toothpick to carve the letter into each piece…which is what I did here.
I went over the letters with a brown permanent pen (can you tell?) so they’d stand out more. This kind of clay is rather stiff which means it’s not exactly easy to carve tiny details in, but I did get it to work. Just get yourself some stamps with garden related names, it’s much easier!
Using Clothespins
Ordinary wooden clothespins are another great tool for this. Put the name of the crop plant on the wide side (past the spring) and if you have room you may even embellish it with a little icon of the plant like I did. Or you can paint the clothespins too if you like, before writing on them.
Clip it on to a bamboo skewer (those things are so handy, aren’t they?) -try to get it into the “small” notch – clothespins have two notches inside them, one bigger than the other.
If you’re like me and you have multiple garden beds, you may want to try the multi-tag approach and create a clothespin tag for each crop plant per bed and clip them all on the same stick. No more wondering what you planted before it sprouts!
You may also want to write the plant name on each side of the clothespin, so you can attach them in an alternating row like the left image above,it looks even better.
I did this and used a small wood craft dowel wit the larger notch clipped on. Individual tags are better for small pots, containers or planter boxes.
Well that’s five ways to create unique plant markers…do you know any others I could add to the list? Now you will have no trouble knowing what’s what in your garden.
