About
Burrough Way is a small patch of grass and wildflowers, enclosed by a sturdy beech hedge on one side, and bushes and shrubs bounding the border with the adjacent houses. At the centre of this small green space is a beautiful sweet chestnut tree that gives abundant nuts every autumn.
Raised beds to one side have been created for a mixture of hardy perennial herbs such as lavender, rosemary and sage, and some fruit bushes. Since 2020, the area has been regularly scythed, scarified and sown with wildflowers.
Directions
This triangular patch of land is tucked away behind a hornbeam hedge. Turn into Burrough Way from Swains Lane. Continue straight on, and the hornbeam hedge is on the left opposite the recreation and playing area. The nearest postcode is TA21 9PP. What3words: version.complains.prospered.
Design
Burrough Way is one of our most successful wildflower areas, with wild carrot, yellow rattle, knapweed, oxeye daisy, ribwort plantain, self-heal, salad burnet, rough hawkbit, red clover and many others. Blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes have been planted in the beds as well as perennial herbs.
Implementation
With the help of the lovely local neighbours, the TTW community gardening team holds scything, weeding and pruning sessions at Burrough Way fairly regularly – and we always love stopping for tea, cake and a chat!
We are maintaining the area as primarily a wildflower area, scything and removing the grass cuttings to lower the nutrients in the soil and encourage more to grow. The yellow rattle has taken really well here, and is an excellent way to weaken the grass as it is parasitic on grassroots. Yellow rattle is an important plant for anyone wanting to establish a wildflower meadow for this reason, and we harvest seed in the late summer so as to help it spread here at across our other sites.
Biodiversity
Butterflies, bees, ants, spiders and hedgerow birds are often seen at Burrough Way. This patch is an essential part of the jigsaw of wildlife-friendly green spaces and corridors that crisscross the town, including (of course) people’s gardens.
We negotiated with the council that they would still manage the hornbeam hedge but we would cut the grass just once per year, allowing the grass and wildflowers to grow and flower. We scarified and raked the soil in autumn 2019, sowing with wildflower seeds, and repeated this more gently in 2020. This mini meadow has since become the densest site for wildflowers with a wide variety of species, including those that flower later in the year.
2017
Acquired
370m²
Size
5
Plants Added
Plant Species
Existing Mature Trees
- 1x Sweet chestnut
Added Trees (Large)
Added Trees (Medium)
Added Shrubs
Planting Plan
Residents on one side of this space first worked with TTW to create two fruit beds in 2017 containing blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries. The beds were created much like those in Corams Lane beforehand with wooden edges and weed suppressant membrane with woodchip on top.
Residents then on the other side approached TTW asking us to manage the whole space because they could see the potential for the grassy space to be a wildflower meadow. They were upset when the council cut the grass when its tolerant lawn wildflowers such as common catsear and clover were in full flower. Barely any grass grew here and the sweet chestnut tree had to be replanted three times because previous trees died, due to the poor soil here. We think that the builders used this space to dump hardcore and also as a parking space when the houses were built, adding a thin layer of topsoil when the housing estate was finished.
The gooseberries didn’t do too well, and in spring 2022 were replaced with herbs of rosemary, lavender and sage, in the hope these will favour the poor soil. As we’ve described in the Corams Lane site design section, we have since removed the weed suppressant fabric and applied compost, to help improve the soil the fruit bushes grow in to increase yield.
Photos Spring 2026
Photos 2024
Photos 2023
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