Whether pocket-sized or expansive, overgrown or orderly, urban gardens are the sanctuaries of the 21st century. In London for instance, Hampstead Heath brings the pleasures of the countryside to within six kilometres of Trafalgar Square. A rare habitat for wildlife displaced by the capital’s expansion, it offers serious hiking (at least by city-dweller standards) and chlorine-free ponds for aquatic play. Less focused on recreation of the body than stillness of the mind, Kyoto’s Ryōan-ji Temple garden is a centuries-old enclave that has inspired artworks as well as contemplation – including a book of drawings and a composition by John Cage, and in turn, a shakuhachi album by Brian Ritchie. Sheltered by an earthen wall and surrounded by gravel that is raked daily with punctilious care, its carefully spaced rocks gather moss with a Zen master’s patience, expressing an implicit invitation to observe at length, untroubled by discursive thoughts. The definitive Thinker, incidentally, is just one of the bronze pensioners (along with a crestfallen Eve and an august Balzac) of the Musée Rodin’s sculpture garden in Paris – the kind of verdant enclosure it is easy to pass by every day without ever suspecting its presence. If this all creates a desire to dig into topsoil or grab a handful of compost, another type of garden affords such opportunities for the metropolitan. Just one block East of Aesop Nolita, purveyor of much-needed hand wash after a day of clearing, planting and tending, the Liz Christy Community Garden was the epicentre of Manhattan’s Green Guerilla movement of the 1970s, which saw abandoned spaces ‘seed-bombed’ for the common good – it remains a topical attempt to reclaim vacant lots and turn them into so many oases for concrete-bound bodies and souls.