Bermy Cuisine regulars got a bit of a surprise this month.

A mural featuring the island’s flora and fauna suddenly appeared outside the Serpentine Road restaurant’s door.

Owner Horace Tucker came up with the idea and hired his childhood friend Dennis Joaquin to make it happen.

“I was thinking there’s so much negativity around the world, I wanted to add a positive flair and make the entrance more welcoming and help promote Dennis’s artwork as well,” he said.

The project was done over Cup Match. It took Mr Joaquin and his business partner Kendra Earls about 16 hours to complete.

The pair, who have “worked together for years”, had painted several murals to help beautify Hamilton at the request of city officials.

“Our longtail mural on Front Street opposite the Bank of Bermuda was commissioned as part of the city mural project,” Mr Joaquin said. “It helps beautify Bermuda, gives the city an atmosphere of calm and tranquility. It’s what we do.”

They hope their most recent mural will have a similar impact, Ms Earls added.

“Hopefully people will see [the Bermy Cuisine mural is] an awesome image and want to come. We tried to bring in all elements of Bermuda — the kiskadee, the butterfly, paw paw, bird of paradise, oleander, hibiscus ... Horace gave us the theme and we worked it out together, a Bermuda-style home entrance.”

Mr Joaquin, who runs Create2Connect with Ms Earls, said he was happy to help Mr Tucker, a friend since high school days.

“Horace and I have done a lot of projects together: making kites, fixing up cycles,” he said. “He had his shop and [organised] this project partly as a way to draw in customers.

“I’ve been an artist all my life. I worked as an airbrush artist for 30 years while also working at Belco and I went from there and explored my puppetry. I make and design my own and go with Kendra to seniors’ homes to visit those, especially, with Alzheimer’s and dementia. You’d be surprised how they wake up when they see a puppet.

“[My art is] my incentive after being in the corporate world for 25 years. I think we can look within ourselves to the creativity in us to create work to make a change in our environment instead of looking to others to make a change. Let it be with each one of us.”

Mr Tucker said he approached Mr Joaquin and Ms Earls, confident they’d do a great job.

“We’ve been friends since childhood,” he said. “He’s always been very artistic. We’ve had such a positive response from our customers we’ve decided to do something else in the future.”