Following the death of local artist Kevin Duffy, a much-loved Wigan garden centre is closing its doors for the final time this week.
Rectory Nurseries was a quirky, family-owned garden centre, with echoes of Alice in Wonderland, because of the charming outsider art Kevin created and proudly displayed.
Kevin’s outsider art was trademarked by his chicken wire and cement sculptures, with their oversized facial features and excessively long limbs.
You always knew a Duffy sculpture when you saw one!
Outsider art is art made by those who are not trained in the art world and have no connections to people in the professional art community.
Despite this, Kevin was a well-known, popular figure, and featured on television multiple times, such as Salvage Hunters, with comedian Johnny Vegas.
In fact, Vegas was so impressed with the art that he bought a Shakespeare bust, and what Kevin called ‘the local yob’, for £400 and £500 respectively.
Rectory Nurseries featured a tavern, a vintage Ford car (Kevin’s first), a trail around the gardens, and a game for children to find a cow around the trail, with the infamous prize of some bubbles, which children (and adults) loved!
On the trail, which had more than its fair share of crooked paths and blind alleys, were Egyptian caves, skeletons, and even a small village with a clocktower.
Everywhere you looked you could see bright colours, with not a straight line in sight, almost in a nod to the uneven rooflines of the world-renowned architect and painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
The trail was a favourite of children, who enjoyed playing games, peeping through windows, and walking along the pathways of a mystical world.
Also at Rectory Nurseries was All Faiths Church, a quiet space built by Kevin where people of all denominations could leave their prayers on post it notes on the ‘Peace Tree’.
However, it wasn’t always like that, and in fact it started life as a scrap heap, before Kevin undertook the monumental task of converting it into a garden centre / quaint fantasy world hybrid, a task that he spent 45 years engaged in.
Visitors will remember a wonderful place where nature, art, and gardening were intertwined into a magical world, not forgetting Kevin’s dog, which would roam freely around.
One local resident said that ‘this was such a special place for the local community, and we will miss it very much’.
Kevin was never shy of a friendly hello, and in answer to his favourite question to visitors, yes, I would love a cup of tea…
