If you continue from the Osier beds you will reach a second set of steps that lead down from the railway and back across the Stour Brook.
The meadow here was developed as part of the Millennium celebrations, in partnership with Scottish-based artist Jim Buchanan, local volunteers and the Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery.
A winding path leads through a series of willow-clothed mounds and hollows, the largest of which is cut annually to create a spiral maze.
There are four varieties of willow, each with their own colour and leaf shape. Growth is rapid and the rangers have to coppice (re-cut) regularly to promote new young shoots. The harvested rods are offered to local schools for creating willow structures within school grounds, and used in weaving workshops, with any surplus being recycled for use as wood chippings on paths around the park.
Other features include herbaceous planting and a wildflower plot with cornfield annuals which are now rare, such as corn cockle, corn marigold and field poppy.
The perennial planting is based on the designs of Dutch gardener, Piet Oudolf, in a style that has become loosely known as prairie planting. The designs include many attractive garden varieties of native plants, often big and bold in both stature and colour which, when combined with tall elegant grasses, reach their flowering peak in late summer.
