Public food forest signage help needed

Coydon Wallham wrote:Since the forest is in the ceded territory, I think it would be cool to include the Ojibwe names. I have a large GLIFWIC plant guide you could use. It includes descriptions of the known traditional uses for anything that grows natively around here, as well as for that of pioneers brought by early settlers.

For my county's annual native plant sale, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the country extension office worked with the local tribal members to accurately include their names for the plants and how they use the plants. It is so much more interesting to read new things about these plants that I thought I knew so well.

I really like the idea to make the QR code link to permies. For one, you have control over permies, and can update or make changes as needed. It would also bring people to permies. And once here, they can not only read about the plants, but discuss them or ask questions as well. And maybe see some other interesting things while they are here...

True, we do have control over posts here on permies.  That would just be a lot of compilation and data to harvest for each post.  I mean a few plants might have posts that we could just point to but for 95% of them we'd have to create a new thread...  Unless I'm not seeing the easy way to do it?

Or link to pfaf or wikipedia for individual plants, but put in a master sign somewhere with a cleverly oriented message guiding people to permies for more information about how they too can get more luxury in their life while decreasing their various footprints.

And have that link to a thread with catered information for community garden visitors.

Reading this whole thread, I was struck with one question, "What is the main thing you want these signs to do?"

Do you want to tell people how to grow these plants themselves, ie sun requirements, moisture requirements etc.  This is information on seed packets or nursery tags.  

If you want to teach people about what plants functional roles are in the food forest then stick with those symbols or words.  This would be a great way to teach people about the whole concept of a food forest.

If you add an additional layer such as human uses for the plant then that's ok.  

But,  you need to figure out what information you are trying to convey then stick with that on every sign.  Keep it as simple as possible or your signage will be bog most people down.  

Plant geeks like me can look up the latin name and delve into growing it and using it ourselves.  Or offer the QR code as a way to get more in depth information on everything but the permaculture function in the food forest.

My goal is to have signage for our food forest (and medicinal beds and pollinator beds) that gives good information to visitors.  I envision a self guided tour of our garden where they will learn a dozen things about permaculture and if they wonder what a plant is, there's a sign identifying it.

So I can see some bigger signs to inform people about permaculture features like herb spirals, hugelkultur, natural building, guilds, etc,  These might be 2' square or bigger and primarily educational.

If you want to teach people about what plants functional roles are in the food forest then stick with those symbols or words.  This would be a great way to teach people about the whole concept of a food forest.

I can see medium size signs (5x8?) that do exactly this.  Maybe for comfrey, aronia, calendula, walking onions and some other featured plants.  Might have 10-20 around the garden.

Lastly we'd have small signs that just identify the remaining plants so people can do more research on their own.  Maybe for asparagus, blueberry, thyme, elderberry.  We'd spend time figuring out which deserve a medium sign and which a small one.  Might have 100 of these around the garden.

I found some black locust at a golf course and I'm checking with them to see if I can harvest it for stakes.  For those who are familiar with black locust, would a peeled 1.5" branch work well as a stake?  How long would it last?  Or do you have to get rid of the sap wood?  Do they even need to be peeled?

Kenneth Elwell wrote:
CATNIP  (Nepeta cataria)
likes: full sun, drought-tolerant
benefits: insects, bees
uses: cat intoxicant

I like this sort of approach!  Information dense, clear, covers the important stuff. That said, I also think the idea of adding Indigenous names for the plants is appropriate.