SEQUIM — Seventy-three children will wallpaper this town with messages such as “Save the Earth, and the Earth will save you,” in time for Earth Day.

Sequim Mayor Laura Dubois decided back in February that she wanted to celebrate the occasion, which falls on April 22 every year.

So she, city planner Joe Irvin and other Sequim officials decided to adopt a plot at the Community Organic Garden and grow some vegetables this summer for the Sequim Food Bank.

On the fence

Dubois also thought it would be good to decorate the garden fence with original art. So she held an Earth Day poster contest for elementary-school age artists, with a “Grow your own food” theme.

On Friday afternoon the contest judges, Sequim Police Chief Robert Spinks and Community School art teacher Martha Rudersdorf, came to the City Council chambers, aka the Transit Center, to choose the winners.

Dubois also invited Dungeness organic farmer Nash Huber to judge the competition, but he was unavailable on Friday.

Rudersdorf and Spinks took their time deliberating over the images, which ranged from strawberries superimposed on the Olympic Mountains to a scene of a chaise lounge parked beside a cherry-tomato salad.

Winners

Finally they selected an earth-toned celebration of carrots by Elizabeth Rosales, a 10-year-old who attends Greywolf Elementary, as the first-place winner.

Stephanie Grow, also 10, is the Helen Haller Elementary fourth-grader who took second place with her study of two girls raising their arms triumphantly over their garden.

Paula Roberts, a home-schooled 10-year-old, won third place with her work featuring the chaise and the “Earth will save you” caption.

Laminated color copies of the art will be posted on the fence at the Community Organic Garden, behind St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 525 N. Fifth Ave., by April 18. That’s when Dubois will host a public commemoration of Earth Day, with a few City Council members and other volunteer gardeners gathering from noon to 12:30 p.m. to dig into their garden plot’s dirt.

The rest of the posters will soon appear in the windows of downtown businesses, Dubois said.

All of the contest entrants will receive packets of vegetable seeds donated by Sunny Farms in Carlsborg and by the mayor.

The three winners will be given an extra prize Dubois will announce at the April 18 Earth Day event.

Judging done, Spinks breathed a sigh of relief.

“That was a nice break,” the police chief said, taking a last look at the art.

Dubois added that she prefers the Sequim artists’ work to the national Earth Day poster, which pictures a polar bear cub clinging to a windmill above melting ice.

“At least these messages are positive,” she said of the students’ posters.

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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.