In my 20s I lived in Manchester, on the sixth floor of a block of council flats just off the A57, or Mancunian (Mancy) Way.

A short walk from Manchester Piccadilly station and the city centre, it was grey, noisy and built up.

I loved every piece of it – my first stab at adulthood, at living on my own.

I painted my bedroom silver and slept on a mattress on the floor, and I grew sweetcorn, tomatoes and courgettes in pots on the balcony.

(I was 24 – of course I grew sweetcorn on the balcony.) I worked and played in the bars and clubs of Manchester's gay village, and I would walk home in the early hours, keys poking through my clenched fist to protect me from would-be attackers, and I would see hedgehogs.

It never occurred to me that the hedgehogs might be in trouble, that they might not have the best time foraging beneath the ring road, beneath the noise and stench of the city.

It occurred to me only that their presence was magical, and that seeing them on the grassy wastelands around my council estate, as I stumbled home from parties and nightclubs, was everything I loved about being alive.

Where the wild things are: the untapped potential of our gardens, parks and balconies – podcast Read more Their home and mine was urban and gritty, but there were trees, areas of long grass, council houses with messy gardens.

There was a little park with cherry trees.

Not much, but enough.