The best thing on campus isn't a building: 400 acres of trails at the Arboretum

Ask a fourth-year where the Arboretum is and about half will point and the other half will say "the what?". It is 400 acres of trails, gardens, wetland and old forest, right next to campus, and the grounds are open every day from dawn to dusk.

Start with the Ivey Trail. 1.1 kilometres through the middle of the place: the World of Trees, the Park in the Garden and the Roots and Shoots Garden. Flat, easy, done in twenty minutes. It is the one to walk between classes.

Then the loops. The Trillium Trail is a 2 kilometre loop through the maple, lilac and rose collections. The Acorn Trail is a 1.5 kilometre loop through open meadows and the beech and oak collection. The Wall-Custance Memorial Forest Trail is 1.5 kilometres with a boardwalk across a wetland into Mtigwaaki Forest.

The forest is the surprise. Mtigwaaki Forest is old-growth maple and beech, with the 700 metre Chipmunk Trail winding through it and a short Mtigwaaki Trail with signs explaining what you are looking at. The Wild Goose Trail, 600 metres of boardwalk and dirt path, runs through marsh, forest and swamp. In October it is the best walk in the city.

Five gardens. The David G. Porter Memorial Japanese Garden, the Edna and Frank C. Miller English Garden, the Italian Garden, the Gosling Wildlife Gardens, and the OAC '56 Park in the Garden. The Japanese garden is where you take someone you are trying to impress.

The rules are short. Dogs on a leash, always. No bikes on any trail. Leave the trails as you found them. The buildings, including the Arboretum Centre at 250 Arboretum Road, are open 8:30 to 4:30 on weekdays; the grounds do not close until dusk.

Why this is on a housing site. If you are choosing between two places and one is a ten minute walk from this, that is worth something a rent number does not show. And when the house is loud and the library is full, 400 acres of quiet is a better study break than your phone.

Once a year. The Arboretum runs an Expo and Plant Sale, and workshops through the year. A plant from the sale is the cheapest way to make a student room look lived in.

The Cribb Team

Cover photo: Hay123.5, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. commons.wikimedia.org