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greenleaf

Nixon Park's visitor's center is like the Smithsonian, only smaller. Taxidermy, hands-on stuff for kids, bees, a copperhead and a milk snake living side by side (so you can compare the venomous with the innocuous), a salmander room, a polar bear (stuffed) that, if you stand in the right place and take a pic, looks like it's grabbing your head. Learning about the natural world doesn't stop at the walls; there's a lifesized giraffe (we could only fit his neck and head in there), an elephant, the entire local watershed (with a meter to see how much water you're drinking at that fountain, or flushing down the john), and Rocky Mountain, African, and Arctic environments.

This is a mural I did in 2012: a series of oversized leaves of local trees plus a field guide. The large size engages the viewer (and is easier to see from floor level). Click the pics for larger size.

PS: doing your own home mural? A school project? Or just hanging a montage of pictures on your wall? Use the paper layout technique here: draw the individual parts on paper and cut out (for photos on walls, cut paper the same size as your photos). Then, using tape donuts or removable poster putty, stick the paper bits to the wall and rearrange till it looks right. Now mark and hang your pictures or draw your mural.

for you Tolkien fans...

Just in case you're Tolkien-impaired; "Legolas" means green leaf, 
he's one of the main characters of Lord of the Rings, and likes to hang out among the trees. 
He also has the peculiar ability to run on top of the snow without snowshoes. Obviously map-impaired.