Gardenkin

An envelope on the notice board says the key to the community garden is free to take, "if you'd like to grow something". You come out of curiosity and find tall weeds, a dry pump and empty beds.

Clear a path, carry the waste to the composter, fix the pump and dig the first bed. When the water runs again, Mira, the garden's keeper, hears it and comes back. The neighbours follow one by one: Theo the carpenter, June the botanist, Rosa the baker, Eli the young gardener, Basil with his family orchard and Nora the naturalist. Each brings their own requests, small hands-on projects and a reason the garden once went quiet.

• Grow carrots, tomatoes, berries, strawberries, flowers, pumpkins, apples and pears, and keep bees once the flowers bloom.

• Turn the harvest into jam, pickles, pumpkin soup, apple pies and honey pears at the preserves station.

• Sell to the neighbours, store the harvest by kind and deliver orders in person.

• A rabbit gathers ripe crops and a hedgehog takes the surplus to market. Train them as the garden grows.

• Clear overgrown plots and dig them before planting.

• Repair the fence, the pump and the garden arch; build a bench, a workshop and a common table.

• Decide how Eli's welcome corner looks and where the common table stands.

Opening the garden is not the end. Follow your garden plans, help every neighbour with a project of their own — lanterns, a grafted pear, a bird corner, a scarecrow, a seed shelf — and hold harvest fairs at the common table.

There is no energy bar, no crop death and no deadline on any request: a harvest left too long only turns to compost, and the bed grows again. After a long break the garden will have grown without you, and nothing you bought is ever lost.