Hoover art teacher creates mosaic sign for butterfly garden

It was a little too chilly for most butterflies to be out and about, but there were a few winged creatures flitting about the Hoover Elementary School butterfly garden Saturday. Five-year-old Sophia and Danielle Fraser each sported a pair of gauzy wings as they made their way around the garden, although Sophia was quick to point out that she was not a butterfly, but rather a fairy.

"If you want to save the fairies, you have to be one," she explained. "They're endangered."

The duo arrived at Hoover with their parents to watch the installation of a brand new mosaic sign created for the butterfly garden by Hoover art instructor Tonya Gainey of Philomath. Gainey spent the entire summer working on the nearly 30-pound sign, which she made of glass and ceramic mosaic pieces. It took her around 100 hours of work to complete the sign.

"I (even) took it camping with me," she said, because she became so focused on getting the piece done. The sign includes donated pieces from tile stores across the area, and Spaeth Lumber.

Gainey emphasizes the use of local products in the art projects she creates with her students, including myrtlewood from Philomath, and willow branches from a Benton County garden.

"I try to do projects that are functional and that students can hang onto and be really proud of," she said.

She even bought 600 pounds of rock when the butterfly garden first went in, and had her students paint on each of the rocks, to create a permanent art piece that borders the garden.

"I told them when they go to college, they can come back and a piece of them will still be here," she said.

Two years ago, all-day kindergarten teacher Katie McNutt helped create the butterfly garden at Hoover, based on gardens she'd created at Mountain View Elementary and Inavale School. She even used seeds from the Inavale garden to grow milkweed in the Hoover garden, a plant that monarch butterflies depend on.

"There's a spirit of interconnectedness of all the gardens," she said.

McNutt worked with students to identify butterflies found in the area, and then match them with native plants that help them survive. Parents of kindergartners help plant new butterfly plants each June in the garden.

"(We're) creating pockets of indigenous habitat," she said. "If we all planted a little milkweed, they'd have resting spots."

Wade Fraser, father of the winged twins, helped Gainey install the sign, which is beautifully decorated on both sides, and replaces a rather ramshackle wooden sign with the words "butterfly garden" hand-painted across it. Then it was time for fairies and butterflies to dance around before the rains came to drive them back indoors.