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I recently found a half-empty bottle of an energy drink placed in the euphorbia trough by one of the scaffolders. An architect friend joked, “Are you sure that’s Lucozade?” which made me see it differently.

In short, the garden is in disarray. Sometimes neglect has its perks; coming back from a trip, I spotted a sunflower sprouting in the back corner.

This week, though, some urgent tidying is underway. As I’m expecting a baby, I’ve enlisted a local gardener to remove troublesome weeds like a prickly weed and robinia saplings from the neighbour’s tree, but keeping desirable plants. Then, in the open patches, I’ll be sowing green manure.

Green manure are superheroes when it comes to boosting soil quality.

My gardening friend Claire has written about green manure, as they play a key role in seasonal planting for edible gardens. But, the only things I’m harvesting from my garden right now are a few foraged apples and some hardy herbs.

My ambitions for the garden are modest and consistent – and improving the soil is top of the list. To update concerned readers, the scaffold is for roof repairs, and the fences are still wobbly, but the neighbours agree with the plan.

Cover crops work wonders for soil health. Soil likes to be covered, which is why unwanted plants pop up. Yet by sowing vigorous crops, you can suppress weeds, bring in bees, host pest-eating creatures, and fix nitrogen.

Cover crops aren’t always showy – though some, like certain lupin varieties and a flowering legume, have pretty flowers – but their role is to grow vigorously rather than look decorative. Once established, you can dig them into the soil, cut them for compost, or leave them on the surface for worms to incorporate. Their work happens underground.

Autumn is perfect for sowing these cold-season plants. I’ve chosen forage rye, which breaks up heavy earth, Italian ryegrass, a weed-suppressor, and field beans.

It feels rewarding in sowing something that won’t stay forever – on the surface, anyway.