This article was originally written by Filipa Gaspar for SWNS — the U.K.’s largest independent news agency, providing globally relevant original, verified, and engaging content to the world’s leading media outlets.
Muriel Baker longed for a garden outside her home near Glastonbury in Somerset, England, but at 94, she couldn’t manage the physical work required to maintain one. So the nonagenarian took a creative approach to the issue: She had an array of trees, roses, and butterflies painted onto her house.
Baker commissioned the mural from local artist Jon Minshull, who depicted a flowering garden in no need of weeding or watering. Minshull, 61, began his career as a muralist in 2007, and has since painted thousands of murals throughout the U.K. and the U.S., typically featuring nature and wildlife. In the town of Glastonbury, where he’s from, he’s completed nearly 30 murals — including a giant giraffe and giant flowers.
“Glastonbury is such a vibrant artistic and culturally rich town, which makes it perfect for murals,” Minshull told SWNS. He noted that while he’s usually asked to paint specific requests by businesses and homeowners, sometimes he’s given creative freedom to come up with his own designs. And at least once, the two types of commissions have combined, allowing him the opportunity to paint something that was meaningful to both him and the client.
The result was his favorite mural in town: a scene of giant dahlias for an art gallery two years ago. “My sister always used to bring me dahlias from her garden when she came to visit me, and when she sadly passed away in 2023, it was an opportunity to paint a huge bunch of dahlias in her memory,” Minshull shared.
Other standouts around town include a fantasy landscape featuring an elephant and dragon that he painted on a man’s garage door, as well as a large kingfisher with a river flowing in the background outside a cottage.
Baker’s garden scene, which took about five days to paint, is the second Minshull adorned her home with. The first, completed in eight days in the spring of 2024, is on a separate wall. It depicts Baker’s father milking cows, and is based on a photo she gave the artist. “It really is lovely,” she said.
“It was wonderful to see her face when it was completed,” shared Minshull. “To bring happiness to people is why I do what I do. When you see their expressions it makes my world, so it’s really good.”
And Baker isn’t the only one enjoying her more recent artistic addition.
“I’ve had a lot of people coming in and looking at it. They all like it,” Baker said of the garden mural. “They can’t believe the little details and how he’s done it.” She noted people have come from “far away” to gaze at the artwork, and that it’s “brought a lot of pleasure to the local community.”
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