Painted Rock Garden Markers: Add Some Personality to Your Garden!

These easy DIY painted rock garden markers are the perfect way to keep the crops in your garden identifiable and cute!

Just a few items and you’re all set…no artistic skills required!

Painted Rock Garden Markers: Add Some Personality to Your Garden!

I am a Jill of all trades, master of none, and as such, I’m always on the hunt for new hobbies.

I mean, a quick scroll through my Project Gallery shows that I’m quite the dabbler in varied interests: reading, making wreaths, vinyl, designing free printables and cut files, home improvement projects, school ideas for my boys, holiday and home decor…the list goes on and on.

A new hobby that I’m trying out this spring is gardening, specifically a vegetable container garden!

I mean, is there anything better in the world than a fresh homegrown tomato?? *wipes drool off mouth*

After spending a weekend transforming our so-called “Weed Box” into a proper container garden complete with transplants and seeds (I’ve since renamed it “Gertrude”), I quickly realized that some visuals would be helpful in remembering where I planted what.

And they’d add some cuteness and personality to our garden…double bonus!

At first there was a lot of “Is this the green bell pepper or the orange one? And what’s this tomato plant: the sandwich or the Cherokee Carbon F1?” (And I’m sorry but the latter totally sounds like a race car series, doesn’t it??)

Immediately, I thought of using painted rocks as garden markers.

I’d previously done a quick and easy project when I made my boys a painted rock Tic-Tac-Toe travel game, and we love painting and hiding rocks around town as part of our local kindness rocks group.

Painted rocks would therefore not only let us know what was growing where and be super easy to create, but most importantly, they’d be cute.

Here I’ll show you how easy it is to create your own DIY painted rock garden markers!

Painted Rock Garden Markers Supplies

Here’s what I used to whip up these simple DIY painted rock garden markers:

Rocks
- These are my favorite rocks to paint on because they are flat and smoooooth!
Pencil for quickly sketching the design
Paint pens
- You can also use basic craft paints and a brush if you’d like
Clear spray sealer to protect the designs from the elements

Painting the Garden Designs on the Rocks

For my sons’ painted rock travel Tic-Tac-Toe game, I used spray paint to first color the rocks, then went back and added the details with paint pens.

However, for these garden markers, I liked the idea of leaving the rock backgrounds their natural stone color, so I forwent the spray paint step.

Therefore, the first step in this garden project was to sketch out my designs with a pencil.

I am not an artist by any measure and just gave it my best go without stressing too much. Perfection is overrated.

Next, I started painting the designs with my paint pens, letting one color dry before adding the next.

I prefer using these paint pens instead of bottled acrylic craft paint and a brush because the pens:

Dry super quickly
Usually only require one coat to get bright, bold colors
Can give precise, fine details and lines
Best of all…there’s no clean up necessary!

Once all the colors were added and dried, I finished up by outlining the crops in white to make them POP off the rocks, and also adding the crops’ names.

Here’s how they all looked!

And do cherry tomato plants actually look like what I whipped up??

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not really sure and don’t really care.

I could have googled it but just felt like knocking these out so I didn’t spend the 20 seconds to look it up. #lazy

Good enough is good enough!

Sealing the Rocks

Now that my designs were finished being painted and fully dried, I headed outside and gave them all a good blast with some clear spray sealer.

This is to protect the painted designs from the sun and weather elements, as well as from any curious critters that might come snooping around.

It also gives a nice glossy shine to the rocks and makes the designs pop.

The Final Painted Rock Garden Markers

An hour or so later, since the sealer was nice and dry, I carried the newly artified rocks over to our container garden.

The ones that correspond to plants that we currently have growing were dropped on the soil in their respective spots, and the rest will be stored in our garage until it’s time to utilize them.

Super cute, no??

They’re extra handy at identifying the plants, especially at the beginning of the season when some were just seeds and others hadn’t yet borne any fruits.

And they’re also a fun, happy, and playful addition to our garden.

Not bad for a couple-hour project!