Talented teenage artist paints mural in Wigan community garden

Her work includes flowers, bees, butterflies, a big rainbow, trees, two young children, a bright sun and the name of the garden in fine lettering.

She also cleverly transformed two rather unsightly water butts into beehives.

Lydia, who turned 15 around a month ago, put in some six months of hard work on the mural, finishing it at the start of September.

She offered to create the artwork for the garden as part of her Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award, which has a requirement for participants to give something back to their community.

Her finished piece was unveiled on Saturday and the talented Standish Community High School pupil was photographed alongside her proud parents Gary and Rita and family business RangeScheme sponsored the project.

Clare Kenyon, Friends of the Cherries Community Garden director, said: “We are absolutely over the moon with the mural.

“The whole community loves it.

“While Lydia has been working in the garden people have been coming up to her, having a chat and telling her what a brilliant job she’s doing.

“It has really boosted her confidence, she was quite shy at first.

“She’s very proud of what she’s done and we are very proud of her. She is amazing and very talented.

“She’s taken every step herself, from designing it to painting it to solving every problem along the way. There are two quite ugly water butts next to the wall so she decided to disguise them as beehives. They look amazing.

“We had always said there would be a mural on that wall and we had it plastered back in 2018 but then it just got left. We had to put it on hold while we sorted out some other problems.

“Lydia stepped forward because she thought it would be a really good project for her Duke of Edinburgh. It was really brave of her and we thought it was brilliant, both for the community and for her personally.”

The community was also able to get involved in the art project as youngsters were invited to the garden for a day to add their handprints to the rainbow.

Ms Kenyon said the community group could not have created the mural without the financial help of the family-run business.

Find out more about the garden on Facebook.