Dr Ann Pearson worked in the gully at the bottom of the Duke St hill. The old trees were cut down by the Council, the timber taken out, and the debris left to rot. Ann decided to plant English trees there, making it a big Cambridge garden.  Black walnuts, silver birch, elms and other trees went in. She worked on it for a few years on her own until the Tree Trust joined her. Down the bank, we planted native trees, and around the top we planted a great assortment of trees, including deciduous ones which make a magnificent show in autumn.

Good examples of exotic trees can be found here; their colour in autumn is spectacular.

The Gillies St end can be accessed from beside Wackrow's Joinery's carpark. At first, Ann and the Tree Trust members would scramble down the bank using the drainage system to get down to the terrace where we had trees, but when Mr. Wackrow extended his building, he made a good track for us.  We planted a row of tarata trees along the side of it, as it was bare and sandy.

Year by year we would take a few more tree down and plant them on the grassy bank below the car park, then we planted along the bank, where there is now a collection of lovely trees. Cedars, bottlebrushes, banksias, camelias, griselinias, pseudopanaxes, nut trees, and a whole row of pittosporums.

The Council mows the grass along the track about once a month, so there is an easy walk to the other end of the track opposite the Duke St hill. At present, this track has deteriorated badly and is now (2025) quite rough. It's still walkable though you do have to watch your footing.

One of our members wanted to recreate the huge expanses of bluebells that can be seen in English woodlands. Putting them into Cambridge gardens is too easy. Ann's Patch is the nearest thing we have to an English woodland, so we planted bluebells here to see if they would thrive. The first batch went in in the winter of 2015, and are doing well, despite being heavily trampled on at one stage. Another batch went in in 2017 and is also doing well so far. Other batches have been planted since.

Unfortunately, in 2019 a large group of teenagers decided to use the track for BMX games. Their activity would have been praiseworthy if they'd done it somewhere else. As it is, the vandalism has set our bluebell project back by several years. The flowers also have to cope with tradescantia, which smothers everything if it's not cleared away periodically. We may have to accept that Cambridge bluebells grow only in Cambridge gardens.

The teenagers have grown and have become more daring with their tracks. The steepness of some of the tracks is almost vertical, and 3 or 4 metres high. They're impressive.