[1][2] This site on the west bank of the River Cam has marshland and wet woodland with mature willows.

Flora include butterbur, and the reserve has the uncommon musk beetle, which lays its eggs in the willows.

Today, the name Paradise designates the nature reserve adjoining Owlstone Croft, but formerly it embraced the whole area up to the Lammas Land.

The earliest mention of bathing in Cambridge records that in 1567 the son of Walter Haddon, while at King's College, was drowned "while washing himself in a Place in the river Cham called Paradise", and William Stukeley, the eighteenth century antiquary, when at Corpus College in 1704 wrote: "I used to frequent, among other lads, the river in Sheep's Green, and learnt to swim in Freshman's and Soph's Pools, as they are called, and sometimes in Paradise, reckoning it a Beneficial Exercise".

In 1740 it was taken over by Mr Rowe, who had introduced into Cornwall a system of forcing early vegetables for the London market, and here he produced them in a scientific way.