Ann’s butterfly garden extraordinaire

An a-‘door’-able garden

Our own Ann Elias has created the ultimate butterfly garden and here we show you all the steps she took to accomplish this project. She has an area that is difficult to plant and here she decided to put her garden ‘background,’ built upon a framework her hubby made.

A variety of old doors made the background

Ann says, “What a wonderful blank canvas this is! I have big plans for this corner of the garden. Nothing will grow here because of the huge trees that are there. Besides, it floods here in rainy weather.” Ann started by collecting four different vintage doors to use as a background for her garden. She also planned to letter the doors with a saying.

Ann's hubby used some 2X4's to build a frame

Ann’s husband used easy 4×4 anchors and the 2X4’s to build a frame for the old doors.

This is what the Easy 4x4 anchors look like

This is what the Easy 4×4 anchors look like

A distinctive teal-colored stripe accents the containers used for planting. This is a theme running through Ann’s entire garden, you’ll find. She says, “I planted milkweed in the trash cans for the butterflies and I still need to find more metal butterflies and paint them teal. I still want to find some buckets of hostas to give the area some green growth. I also have to get my chair sandblasted and painted. But I could not wait to share it with you all!”

Ann says, “Another nice thing about this space is that I now have a place to store things out of sight. Like my wheel barrel and wagon I use for gardening. Even my trash cans filled with compost.”

Finished butterfly garden!

“It stopped raining so I could finish up the lettering,” Ann tells us. “I planted milkweed in the “trash” cans for the butterflies. I still need to find some more metal butterflies and paint them teal. I still want to find some more buckets and add some hostas in them to give the area some green growth. I also have to get my chair sandblasted and painted. But I could not wait to share it with you all.

The lettering in Ann Elias’s butterfly garden, “Butterflies are self-propelled flowers!”

We like how the butterflies are all going in the same direction to create movement, and love how all the doors are each unique. The color and the simplicity are just right.

Details

For this garden butterfly, Ann says, “I made my butterfly from dishes, a bottle and some gems. The wings are made out of plexiglass.” Ann used GE II Silicone to attach the gems.

The wings are made out of plexiglass

The butterfly in the garden

Adding a garden bicycle…

Ann spray-painted her bike with teal, her signature color. Most of us spray paint bikes one solid color as a garden accent. Ann painted stripes on the garden containers to match others in her garden.