'Pollinators Spread Love' mural blossoms at Vinmont Veteran Park

A once-gray wall lining Vinmont Veteran Park was transformed into a vibrant mural of blossoming plants and lively animals, painted by Bronx artist Diana Capasso in collaboration with the nonprofit Riverdale Main Streets Alliance.

The mural, titled “Pollinators Spread Love,” will be accompanied by a pollinator garden, where Wave Hill will help plant native blooms and grasses that appeal to insects, spiders and birds throughout the year, Cathy Deutsch, Wave Hill’s director of horticulture, said. The alliance said it hopes the project encourages residents to connect with the beauty in nature, and admire an artistic addition to their community.

Riverdale Main Streets Alliance is a volunteer-based network of community members, civic organizations and local businesses that work to expand the neighborhood’s vitality through street clean-ups and other initiatives. 

Near Mosholu Avenue and West 254th Street, the concrete bordering Vinmont’s playground shows a verdant garden with various flower species — deep red roses,  bold tulips, plump, polka-dotted mushrooms and trumpet daffodils, to name a few — accompanied by buzzing bees, orange monarch butterflies, a smiling snail and a wide-eyed racoon peeking its head out from a log.

Capasso, who grew up in Riverdale and now lives in Yonkers, owns Artistic Elements Studio, a mobile art studio offering classes, face painting and paint-and-sips. In addition to the new pollinator mural, she is the creative behind “The Rose of Kingsbridge” mural on Bailey Avenue and West 238th Street, and helped another artist make “Broadway Tropics” on West 231st Street and Broadway.

When the alliance pitched the mural idea to Capasso, she enthusiastically accepted, recalling the days when she would walk her daughter through Vinmont and think the “blah” wall “needed something bright.” The pencil sketches Capasso gave to the alliance closely mirror the realized design.

Capasso started painting the mural in the fall of last year, and added to the mural when weather allowed, a process she described as a “labor of love.” Before the piece was even finished, parents would pass by, hand-in-hand with their kids, and point to colors or other things they observed, she said. Capasso added sparking that connection made the undertaking well worth it.

“It’s definitely not only engaging the community, it created engagement between the parent and child,” Capasso explained.

Capasso had some help along the way from Riverdale Country School students, an effort led by board member Dr. James Duval, who is the associate head of school and head of lower school. For the group of 11 year olds, it was meaningful for them to know they could play a part in improving their neighborhood, Duval said.

“It’s just a good reminder for everyone in the community about what it means to take pride in the place where you live,” he said.

At the helm of “Pollinators Spread Love” was Giordana Avila, an optometrist and 20-year Riverdale resident who is board vice chair of the alliance. Each time she passed the Vinmont wall over the years, Avila would think, “‘We could really do something great here.’”

She started to brainstorm. The weeds should be pulled, the wall needs some color, a garden could be planted, she thought. More than a year ago, Avila started working to get permission for the project from the city.

Now, as the project gets closer to completion — ideally done around September, she said — Avila hopes the project inspires the same inspired feeling she experienced in other people.

“If we want to keep where we live a nice place to live,” she said, “We have to take care of it.”