I was seventeen when I first noticed how quiet the courtyard had become. I lived with my mam in a block of flats near Dublin city centre, the kind of place where everyone knew your business but not always your loneliness. The elderly residents used to sit outside in summer, wrapped in cardigans even when the rest of us were sweating, commenting on the buses, the weather, and who had let their dog do what near the bins. But after the pandemic, the benches stayed empty. Curtains twitched instead. Doors opened only wide enough for a hand to take in shopping.
My nana had lived in the same complex before she passed. She had a windowsill full of basil, parsley, and one stubborn tomato plant that never produced a single tomato. She used to say plants gave you a reason to look forward to tomorrow. After she died, I hated passing the patch of waste ground behind the laundry room. It was full of weeds, broken plastic, and one rusted shopping trolley. From the third floor, it looked like a bruise in the middle of the buildings.
I was doing my Leaving Cert, working weekends in a café near Camden Street, and pretending I wasn’t angry all the time. One afternoon, Mrs Keogh from the second floor was trying to carry a bag of compost from the bus stop. She was eighty-one, tiny as a sparrow, and fierce enough to frighten grown men. I offered to help. She told me she used to grow roses in Cabra before she moved here. “Now I grow dust,” she said, nodding towards her flat. I laughed because she did, but something in me sank.
That evening I printed a sheet in the library asking if anyone would be interested in a small community garden. I wrote it in black marker and stuck it beside the lift with too much tape. By morning someone had written, “Who’s going to clean it when it’s wrecked?” underneath. Someone else wrote, “Great idea.” By the end of the week, seven names were on the sheet, all over the age of sixty-five except mine.
The council permission took longer than I expected, and I learned quickly that enthusiasm does not move paperwork any faster. I emailed, phoned, filled in forms, and sat in reception areas with school notes sticking out of my bag. My friends thought it was funny at first. “You’re basically a pensioner now,” they said when I skipped a trip to Phoenix Park to attend a residents’ meeting. Maybe I was. Or maybe I was just tired of watching people disappear behind their own doors.
When we finally got permission for four raised beds and a water butt, I thought the hard part was over. It wasn’t. The first Saturday, only three people came down: Mrs Keogh, Mr Ali from the ground floor, and a widower named Patrick who brought a flask of tea but no tools. The soil arrived in heavy bags, donated by a garden centre after I sent them a dramatic email about community spirit. We dragged them across the yard inch by inch. My hands blistered. Mrs Keogh kept telling me I was holding the shovel wrong. Patrick pretended not to cry when we planted the first tray of marigolds because they had been his wife’s favourite.
By May, people were looking out again. Not all at once. A man who never spoke to anyone began bringing eggshells for the compost. Two sisters from the top floor donated old mugs for seedlings. A little girl from the next block painted stones with the names of herbs on them. We planted potatoes, strawberries, mint, lavender, and more hope than any of us admitted. The garden was messy and uneven, but it smelled alive.
Then one Monday morning, I came down before school and found two of the beds kicked apart. The lettuces were scattered across the concrete. Someone had snapped the bamboo sticks and thrown soil against the wall. I stood there with my schoolbag on, feeling foolish in a way I had not expected. I thought of all the people who had warned me. I thought maybe kindness was something the city chewed up when you left it outside overnight.
Mrs Keogh found me sitting on the edge of the broken bed. She did not comfort me in the soft way. She handed me a
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