CARLSBORG — Good chemistry — the human kind — has caused a wild portrait to materialize at Robin Hill Farm County Park.
More precisely, “The Dungeness River in Spring,” a mural wrapped around a plywood soil bin, is now part of the Matt Albright Native Plant Center.
The center, anchored by a 2,100-square-foot greenhouse built by Olympic National Park last fall and winter, is where park workers are raising the plants to be part of the massive Elwha River restoration project to begin next year.
It’s named for the native plant specialist who envisioned a greenhouse devoted to this purpose; Albright died of cancer in 2007 after spending 19 years working in the park.
Rod Farlee, a retired chemist and Friends of Olympic National Park board member, came up with the mural idea after building a soil bin for the plant center.
He was pleased about using recycled materials for the bin but admitted that the thing was ugly.
Fortunately Farlee’s wife, Wendy Goldberg, in addition to being an organic chemist herself, is an artist.
And last April, she brought her sketchbook into Sequim, to capture the mountains freshly draped in snow; along with that image she sketched the Dungeness River as it looks from Old Olympic Highway.
Goldberg could have gone ahead and painted the mural on her own.
But she and her husband wanted to spread things around, preferably to young people.
Farlee also wanted to make the painting an educational experience for the young muralists.
And so this spring, Goldberg collaborated with Carla Morton, a Greywolf Elementary School teacher who runs the science fair club, to bring a team of science-savvy fifth-graders into the mix.
Several of these kids won blue ribbons at the 2010 Washington State Science & Engineering Fair, Goldberg said.
In addition to working with them on the mural, she brought in an Olympic National Park ranger plus plant propagation specialist Dave Allen, the keeper of the greenhouse, to talk to the fifth-graders about wilderness ecology.
Farlee, meantime, persuaded Friends of Olympic National Park to supply the $125 cost of paint for the mural.
Goldberg wanted tough exterior house paint, however, and that meant she could afford just six colors. She made do, mixing the few hues into a range of shades demanded by the project.
Farlee, 57, and Goldberg, 56, retired young and moved from Wilmington, Del., to Sequim in 2003.
These days they’re into vigorous volunteering, Farlee with the Washington Trails Coalition and Friends of Olympic National Park and Goldberg as volunteer coordinator at the Matt Albright Native Plant Center.
Since December, Farlee and his fellow laborers have put in hundreds of hours at the center, working on the nursery structures and caring for the plants.
Summer, Farlee said, “is trail-work season.” He’s already built a bridge on the Little River trail, among other projects.
To find out about working with the Friends of Olympic National Park or at the plant center, e-mail wendybg@olypen.com or visit www.friendsonp.org.
Farlee grew up in Oregon and Idaho, and is “very much a mountain man,” said Goldberg, who comes from the other end of the spectrum: Brooklyn, N.Y.
The two chemists met in 1987 at the Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference in Asilomar, Calif.
“Even scientists fall in love,” said Goldberg.
And both care deeply about the Olympic Mountains’ ecosystems.
After all, Goldberg added, “ecology is chemistry.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.