Garden Craft

 I quite like it when I come up with a way to combine my love of making things with gardening. I've been wanting to put some signs in the garden for a while now. I'm slowly developing my plan working towards making our gardens more educational, and lots of people look through them, so I thought some signage might add to the experience. It took me a long time to come up with an idea that I was happy with. Black marker pens on iceblock sticks wasn't really the look I was going for. So when I was painting a piece of board to make a blackboard for the school kitchen gardens, I started thinking about how I could translate that to the garden. I quite liked the idea of using the blackboard/chalk look, to tie in with the cafe menu board, which makes the link with using the produce in the kitchen.

 I used some scrap ply and sawed it up into slices, using the table saw at the local community education night woodwork class. I gave them a couple of coats of blackboard paint, wrote on them, then sprayed with varnish. I thought it wasn't going to work when I put the varnish on for while it's wet the writing disappears, but was relieved when it dried nicely. I didn't have a back up plan.

I haven't labelled everything, just plants which are commonly asked about, or more unusual, or because of their place in the garden.