Preparing for modern apartments to rise, a CT town decides to reshape its image

Community leaders say it’s also a way of gradually reshaping the town’s reputation, perhaps even making it a bit of an Instagrammable destination.

As part of its plan to revitalize the dreary Silver Lane corridor , East Hartford this spring opened its first pollinator garden in little-used DePietro Park — and is ready to begin the vastly more ambitious job of creating a sunflower maze there.

Establishing a sprawling meadow of sunflowers on what has long been just a grass field bordering a high-traffic intersection is a strategy for beautifying the neighborhood.

“We’re going to continue to make this park into East Hartford’s version of Elizabeth Park,” Mayor Connor Martin told the town council in mid-June.

When Martin announced the idea last winter, he acknowledged that it would be a big change for East Hartford, which has long been associated more with heavy industry than botanical gardens.

But the town had a farming and gardening history long before it hosted jet engine factories and commercial warehouses, and residents and visitors alike deserve to see more natural beauty, he said. And a sunflower maze could help put DePietro on a par with widely popular parks like Elizabeth in West Hartford and Wickham in Hartford, he said.

“It’s creating another experience that you come to East Hartford for. From the road, imagine a sea of yellow flowers. We know Elizabeth Park is known for its rose garden, Wickham Park is just known for so much. What if East Hartford is known for its sunflower maze?,” he said. “No one else in this area has that.”

The sunflower fields are in the plans for next year, but less than a month ago the town unveiled the first stage of the DePietro makeover: A pollinator garden.

The local Rotary Club, Lions Club and the Garden Club of East Hartford joined with the Beautification Commission to revitalize DePietro, a largely overlooked grass field that’s barely a mile east of Rentschler Field. They assembled a team of 25 volunteers, including seven students from nearby Sunset Ridge Middle School, to build it this spring.

“A pollinator garden supports the biodiversity needed for the insect kingdom to eat, shelter, and breed,” the parks department wrote on the town’s Facebook page. “This garden is designed to attract pollinating insects, so not only will it support beautification but also local animal life!”

The location was no accident. East Hartford has long known that the nearly 7-acre DePietro is rarely used, and municipal leaders were eager to brighten it up as part of improving the Silver Lane corridor. Councilor Travis Simpson two years ago cited it as one of the towns underused resources, and then-Mayor Michael Walsh said improvements were coming.

DePietro’s prime location at Silver Lane and Forbes Street, two of East Hartford’s busiest thoroughfares, has worked against it over the years. With no parking, no trails and no playground or picnic tables, DePietro is mostly a green blur to motorists speeding past to somewhere else.

The public reviews so far have been positive, even from former residents.

“That’s wonderful. When we lived in East Hartford and drove by the park, it was nothing more than a field — finally getting something great done with that site,” one former resident wrote on Facebook. “I wish I was still in East Hartford, I would have volunteered to help and would love to track its progress.”

Another resident’s comments indicated the garden is attractive even to people who can’t stop to visit: “I get to drive by it every day, perfect placement at the park and stoplight on Forbes and Silver Lane.”

The town now intends to install benches and shady arbors with climbing plants. And Martin is working with the local Handel Farm to plan the larger sunflower maze.

A few years ago, the town embarked on a drive to get rid of Silver Lane blight from an earlier generation when the corridor was a thriving retail hub.

Most of the efforts so far have been high-profile economic development projects, such as demolishing the shabby Silver Lane Plaza and encouraging the planned Concourse Park complex of more than 400 apartments on the site of the former Showcase Cinemas multiplex.

Local leaders see the DePietro Park initiative as a low-cost, high-payoff continuation of that. And Martin said East Hartford deserves a fresh look.

“For me, I’m always thinking ‘How can I attract young people to East Hartford, how can I keep them here? This may sound funny, but my goal is to figure out how to make East Hartford more Instagrammable,” he said. “I could see people coming to this like they do to Elizabeth Park or Wickham Park, to get their engagement photos, graduation photos, birthday photos. It just creates this experience.”