My SIL does this type of work at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix...they do some fantastic things!!!! A couple of years ago they had Dale Chihuly bring in glass sculptures and they were magnificent and really attracted folks in. Right now they are doing a bug display and the schools will be taking kids in... It takes a lot of work to tie it all together...They even do some movies. I think they had to wait for 4 years before they get Chihuly's work there. My SIL got to help set up the glass sculptures in the plants. I hope the following site does it justice.

http://www.dbg.org/events-exhibitions/chihuly

Here's a sign I find both effective and visually appealing for the Denver Botanic Garden's corn maze.
http://www.botanicgardens.org/sites/default/files/2011Maze.pdf

Here is a link that might be useful: DBG corn maze sign

There is a mass planting of some variety of "Sea Holly" at the Guelph Arboretum. The fluorescent blue in such an expanse was striking.

Coolest thing I can think of that we've seen - "Miss DiVine", a lady with stilts on her legs and arms and completely covered in greenery, that we saw at the indoor gardens at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. She blended in with the background and you wouldn't notice her until she started walking around. She was an acrobat and very cool! I guess that's not something that you could have there every day though.
How about some kind of unusual water feature. Jumping waters maybe.
Or maybe a Fairy Ring of toadstools you can walk or sit on?
What will be planted in that area? Does it have a theme?
You have a great job by the way.
I'm thinking...

Love, love love these ideas!! Please do keep thinking and keep them coming!

The theme is, well, not really a theme. This is a garden that was donated to the gardens by a Nashvillian in the 1960s. Her gardens were legendary. The family left them to the botanical gardens.

It has fallen into pretty bad shape over the years, so they scraped it and are completely restoring it with the original plants.

One thing that will be a special focus: Her potting shed. They want to make it a feature that children will be able to enter and find something...magical.

The kids would get a huge kick out of the fairy rings!

Another thing that my SIL said that really brings in the folks to the Phoenix garden...Desert Bot.G...was luminaries. Folks like to donate one and set them around in the evenings about this time of year. Don't know if you are doing evening type events...

Ginnier, I have seen the Chihuly display at the NY Botanical Garden and always wondered how they set up such massive displays of glass. Your SIL must have had a blast doing that.

Connietn, I realized I don't have many signs from the gardens I've visited but here's a bunch of neat things I've seen at some.

Tower Hill Botanic Garden in MA had a very simple entryway with a flag and beautiful planters.
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Loved this idea with dried allium heads.
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This was a beautiful fountain that the kids were really drawn to.
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Such a great turtle fountain.
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This was on a walk in Paris. I liked the continual towers of roses as a feature.
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At Chanticleer in PA these were arbors made from thick twigs and rebar.
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They also had very cool pathways.
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I thought this was a really cool feature in one part of Chanticleer.
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They also had many sets of adirondack chairs painted tone on tone with floral decorations. They were in all kinds of colors depending on which part of the garden it was. Sorry for the blurry photo, but you get the idea.
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They had beautiful bridges too.
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Ideas from the Chelsea Flower Show.
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A couple interesting things from the Norfolk Botanical Garden.
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OK! I'll stop! Sorry. I get carried away when it comes to botanical gardens and public gardens in general. I guess it's a good thing that for some unknown reason I didn't bring my camera to either the NY or Brooklyn botanical gardens or there would have been many more photos! One really cool thing I saw at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was a bunch of huge bugs they made from large wire frames and then they planted annuals around the frames in different colors. So they would have a caterpillar of different rings of colors, or a butterfly with patterned wings, etc.

Thyme, thank you so much for sharing these pictures! Wow, talk about inspiration. :) I really like the idea of the painted allium heads, and the colorful sticks. I think the garden is going to debut in early spring, when there may not be a lot of color yet. Accents like those would be perfect, I think.

Thank you, thank you!

I've got one also from Tower Hill that is pretty cool

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I was on a private garden tour and this lady had many different areas. Each one had a laminated sign and started with "The herb garden is my favorite garden because I like to cook and ....." "The shade garden is my favorite garden because I can cool off on a summer day and ...." "the perennial garden is my favorite garden because of the riotous color and ...."

It amused me that they were all her "favorites".

I didn't get any pictures of these boxes, but meant to mention that at Chanticleer they had plant lists for each particular border. The lists were held in cute boxes in each garden.

Here is a link that might be useful: Plant list boxes