Get some green therapy
my tiny balcony has always been a luxury I can’t really afford, raising the rental price of a one-bed flat in London from hobbling to laughable: 71% of my take-home pay – not including bills. But when, two years ago, I found myself rushing to move out of a chaotic shared house for the sake of my state of mind, flat-hunting as a knee-jerk reaction in the weeks after my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 32, I needed not just stability, but a sanctuary – and so the pricey flat with the tiny balcony it was.
Back then, it was somewhere to sit and decompress after days at the hospital and long weeks at work. I bought a little-to-nomaintenance fig tree, then an olive, and wrapped fairy lights around the railings. Attempts to grow lavender and then tomatoes failed – after a week or so, I’d forget them, too wrapped up in work, dating, life in general. Only the trees and a hardy rosemary plant survived, a few enduring signs of life on an otherwise bare space not quite five metres square.
Then, the Saturday before lockdown began, I went to my local garden centre. I felt I should be preparing for the apocalypse in some way – everyone else was stockpiling loo roll; I stockpiled plants, wanting to make my flat as lovely as possible before I was stuck in it for weeks and months. I filled my basket with seeds – flowers, herbs and cherry tomatoes, and a bag of compost.
After that first afternoon’s planting, things moved fast. I didn’t go back to the office or the permanent job that I’d resigned from just two weeks prior to lockdown – I had decided to go freelance to focus on the podcast The Wingwoman, which I cofounded last year – instead working out my three months’ notice in complete isolation.
I’ve always liked my own company but, during these months, being alone not by choice, but law, I’ve never felt so lonely. I worried about my family – as well as my sister, both my parents received treatment for cancer last year, which meant they all had compromised immune systems. I also watched the comings and goings of my bank balance, worrying about paying the rent. Wide awake at 3am for the nth night in a row, unable to quiet the noise in my brain enough to sleep, I ordered jasmine and honeysuckle climbers online. The next sleepless night, I hunted down Cretan terracotta pots.
One morning, I lifted a yogurt pot lid and found my first tomato seedling; by May there were 30. I planted the four I had space for and left the rest on neighbours’ doorsteps and on my front stoop, with a note asking passers-by to take them home.
My balcony needed me and so I poured myself into it. My little outdoor space gave me something to care for and look forward to, but it was also something I could control when I couldn’t control anything else. Getting my hands dirty gave me headspace, and a sense of accomplishment that I wasn’t getting anywhere else. It helped me find a new rhythm, completely different to the one of commuting, working and socialising that I was used to, but a rhythm nonetheless – watering, deadheading, aphid offensives...
And now that I can see family and friends again? I might go 24 hours without stepping on to the balcony, but no longer. The tomatoes are ripening and the jasmine is flowering, close enough to my bedroom window that it often scents my dreams.