"City landscapes tell the stories of human settlement and development. They feature architecture and design influenced by the generations which came before us and sowed seeds or nurtured plants gathered from around the world. There is greater diversity in city parks than you'll find in any other UK habitat.

So I went to Velma Pollard's 'View Up Through Her Window', reminding me that what we perceive to be naturalised plants or wildlife are actually shared, plundered, translocated or simply travelling echoes of other places and cultures now blended with and enriching our own. Though there is a difference, as she remind us - ‘gardening is costly here/and cold.’"

"At the heart of the city – with its crack sellers and wind-blown litter – are Helen Dunmore’s 'City Lilacs'. I particularly liked this poem as it pitches me right into the debate about the resilience and determination of weeds to survive despite the odds. These determined plants, both big and small, colonise barren places and bring life, colour and vitality: ‘here the city lilacs release their sweet, wild perfume/then bow down, heavy with rain.’"

"Finally, I discovered the Scottish poet John Glenday’s short poem 'The Garden', which adds a mystical or religious quality to green space, or in his words ‘the powdery ceanothus shade’. This speaks of the circularity of nature to me rather than divinity, and how things inexplicably change or transform."