Student Artist Creates Tropical Mural

The large wrap-around tropical mural grabs your attention as you walk around the high hills of Caxambas Drive in Marco’s Estates area. According to homeowner Harriette Tax, she was tired of looking at the gray concrete wall surrounding her pool area. Initially, she had it painted green and yet still she wanted something more – such as a bright mural to go with the tropical setting of her side yard.

Tax has known the Falla family through San Marco Catholic Church. Sarah Falla, a local resident and a high school senior at the Freedom Institute of Naples, is very big in music and art, but she has never had a formal art background or taken an art commission. Sarah attended local schools and is a serious student; in 2025, she received the distinct honor of being given the Venice Diocesan Council of Catholic Women (VDCCW) Golden Rose Award. She is homeschooled and also enrolled as a senior - a unique combination of a homeschool setting with teachers, advisors, and classmates, where students can go to campus full-time or part-time. It fits well with working students holding several part-time jobs. Sarah plans to attend college at Florida SouthWestern University after graduation on May 28, 2026.

Sarah prepared a series of sketches for Tax and shared that she was inspired by the tropical hibiscus and plumerias with their vibrant colors of yellows, pinks, and oranges – and these are themes that remind her of a place that she loves – Marco Island.

Looking around the local landscape, the hardy hibiscus is a stand-out beauty year-round. It is a hardy shrub that never fails to evoke the image of a tropical paradise. The flowering season for hibiscus in Southwest Florida is year-round.

The other standout is the Plumeria. Unfortunately, most of our snowbirds don’t get to enjoy their blooms as they drop their leaves and go dormant during the winter months, coming out in full bursts in the spring, summer, and early fall. And locals know you can choose a plumeria by its fragrance. The red, pink, and yellow have a strong, sweet scent, and some have a fruity, subtle, and delicate scent.

It is no surprise that Sarah chose these tropical floral beauties as the theme of her first art mural commission, giving life to an old gray concrete pool wall. Tax is very pleased with the tropical mural and so proud that she can now enjoy looking at it during her early-morning or late-afternoon walks. She wished she had done it sooner!

Tax is a long-standing board member of the Friends of Tigertail (FOTT) for the last 14 years and chair of the FOTT Summer Camp Scholarship Committee. She is a retired psychiatric nurse and educator and loves to grow veggies and flowers on her property in upstate New York. In 2022, Tax wrote and produced a play shown at the Marco Players, “Silver Alert.”

Her home in Marco is all about Florida-friendly vegetation and she is a steward of resident gopher tortoises. She was an active gopher tortoise volunteer with Nancy Richie, back in the day, and a supporter of the Owl Watch Program in Marco.