Landscape of Lore is the initial stage of the 20-year masterplan for Tendring Colchester Borders, a Garden Community embedded with rich ecological, cultural, and community values.

Periscope is leading the landscape and public realm design of the Masterplan, Salary Brook Country Park and Phase 1, which will deliver, retail and employment spaces, strategic green infrastructure and 800 homes of the eventual 7750.

The design draws on local folklore and rural traditions, creating a Landscape of Lore, where ancient landscapes, orchards, bluebell woods and community come together. Rooted in Essex’s agricultural heritage, the proposed landscape restores and enhances existing hedgerows, supporting biodiversity while offering spaces to grow, play, and connect. Water plays a central role, with swales and ponds reflecting the rhythms of local Salary Brook and creating a public realm adapt to changing flood requirements.

The ambition is to create a pedestrian and cycle orientated neighbourhood, historic routes and mature hedges that bisect the site are reimagined as walkable streets and cycleways built from local materials. These Hollow Ways and Foraging Paths create playful, biodiverse corridors that link homes to nature and encourage everyday encounters with the land and are used as a defining landscape character throughout the neighbourhood.

At the entrance of the development is Gateway Place, a flexible civic and community hub connected by walkable green corridors and a commuter cycle route. Adjacent to this is the Meanwhile Garden, designed for food-growing, education, community use, with a tree nursery that will grow some of the 1,100 new trees proposed in the neighbourhood.

Periscope undertook research with local quarries to source local gravels in order to understand availability of