 With the loss of elms along Tooting Bec Road to Dutch Elm Disease, most visitors are now immediately aware of late Victorian era plantings of horse chestnuts on the boundaries, but there are some much older trees — notably the oaks parallel to Garrad's Road which are the successors to an avenue first recorded in the 17th century.In the 1990s the junction of Tooting Bec Road and Church Lane was widened, encroaching on the common.A few metres of grass behind the railings of the former Tooting Bec Hospital (redeveloped as the Heritage Park residential development) are now part of the common in exchange for the lost land.