I live in both NYC, where I have no garden at all and London, where I am in the process of reclaiming a terribly neglected back garden in Tooting. Because I am mainly in New York my gardening time is limited and I count on my very dear partner (mostly in London) to “garden by proxy” for me. He calls himself Brown Thumb, so it’s an interesting experiment.

Until last year both of us were mainly living in New York and the back garden went untended for over a decade. Last summer we started cleaning it up. I don’t know how many truck loads of branches, bramble canes, waist-high grasses, leaves and general rubbish we hauled to the recycling center in Wandsworth. After five days of work we’d uncovered all sorts of forgotten features— flagged areas, old beds… a lovely belfast sink and a metal garbage can dug two feet deep into the ground and sprouting a tree (that one took a full day to deal with). I think I got one border planted with a few perennials and then we covered the rest of the areas we wanted to plant with plastic and let them be for the winter. Oh, and did I mention there was a defunct pond, too? We pulled out the plastic liner, piled plant and kitchen waste in it and covered it with plastic, too.

This year we’ve gotten a bit more done. We have two vegetable beds, an asparagus bed, and the pond has been completely removed (don’t ask about the insane amounts of concrete its creator used. Just don’t). The perennial beds (I added another) sport all sorts of flowers and herbs.

I really wanted to plant hollyhocks, but didn’t manage it and now I am taunted by the sight of them all over the neighborhood. Oh well, there’s always next year. It’s an ongoing process.