Soon after 9/11, I moved into an old building by Ground Zero. First step? Plant an unlikely patch of green

If you listen, I mean really listen, you will hear your garden speaking to you. Mine, which sits on a 10th-floor Manhattan terrace, a stone’s throw from where the World Trade Center stood, first spoke to me on a crisp September morning 20 years ago. I had jury duty that day and decided to walk the two miles south from my home in Greenwich Village down to the courthouse in the financial district.

But when I turned south on to 6th Avenue, I looked up to see see an orange hole flaming at the centre of the tower ahead of me. A woman nearby fell to the pavement, screaming something about a plane. It didn’t seem like a good day to go downtown; yet something compelled me to continue south. When I arrived at a gas station on Canal Street, a boom sounded and a puff of smoke issued from just behind the tower. “What was that?” I asked a taxi driver, filling his tank nearby. “Well, see those two buildings are connected with pipes,” he said with the unquestionable authority endemic to New York cabbies. “When you get a fire in one it spreads and you get a fire in the other.” Makes sense, I thought, and pushed southwards.