I’d had a very tough few years after my father died, living on the streets and sleeping with one eye open. But as I looked at a tulip tree that day, my love of gardening came flooding back

I spent the early 00s living in my family home in west London, caring for my elderly father. When he died, in February 2015, I lost my home. When you’re on the streets, you have to sleep with one eye open in case people try to steal your things, so you end up being on alert 24 hours a day. The effect of living like that means you often look for distraction and I soon began spending time with other homeless people who were drinking and using drugs. I started smoking crack and heroin, and drinking heavily. My days all began to look the same: trying to stay warm, get into shelters, eat and score the next fix.

When Covid hit in early 2020, things became really hard – people were getting ill on the street and it felt sometimes as if we had been abandoned. Eventually, I was relocated to a hotel room in Putney during the lockdowns and while I was there I started working with a housing charity, who got me a flat in Mortlake, Richmond upon Thames. By September 2021, I was finally off the streets and I knew that meant I also had to get clean, otherwise my place would become a crack den.