Barker's Bush is a

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

located in the Grand River watershed near the banks of the

Nith River The Nith River is a river in Brant, Oxford and Perth Counties and the Regional Municipality of Waterloo in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The Nith River is approximately 125km in length and empties into the Grand River at the town of Paris. ...

in the community of

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

County of Brant The County of Brant (2021 population 39,474) is a single-tier municipality in the Canadian province of Ontario. Although it retains the word "county" in its name, the municipality is a single-tier municipal government and has no upper tier. The C ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada. The bush is directly north and west of Lion's Park, and less than one kilometre northwest of the confluence of the Nith and the Grand rivers. Consisting of a mix of both

conifer Conifers are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single ...

ous and

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

trees common to the Carolinian forests of southwestern Ontario, the bush itself is riddled with extensive bike and hiking trails which are used frequently, especially so through the warmer months (typically late Spring through early

Fall Autumn, also known as fall in American English and Canadian English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southe ...

). The vast majority of Barkers Bush historically has been located on private property, however, trespassing has generally been accepted and the public has used the trails extensively for many years. Historically, the only public land entrance to the bush was through Lion's Park, however, this changed in 2002 when the local municipality built a steel footbridge from the east banks of the Nith to the west banks located in the bush itself. In 2016 Losani Homes purchased the agricultural fields in which Barkers Bush surrounds to develop a new subdivision, as well as some of the forest itself. In response the County of Brant bought roughly 100 acres of Barkers Bush in 2019 to preserve the rest of the forest and trails within it. The skeletal remains of the river dam found at the southeastern edge of the bush are a relic from an era when shipping traffic was common on the Nith.

References

* Forests of Ontario Geography of the County of Brant {{WesternOntario-geo-stub