The Green Curtain

My thirteen-year-old self was scandalized, indignant, and outraged.  The local zoo would bend the rules slightly and allow me to volunteer... but I was still too young to take on any role working directly with animals.  What they could offer me, they conceded, was the chance to work with the zoo's Horticulture Department.  Weeding and watering, I thought.  How delightful.


I accepted, at any rate.  First of all, I wasn't going to lose sight of my life-long dream of working (with animals) in a zoo.  I wasn't about to do anything that would make me lose face in front of the people who I hoped would hire the adult version of me someday.  Secondly, I figured that volunteering in the gardens and planting beds might eventually result in something more.  I'd heard that the horticulturalists also maintained the plantings in the animal exhibits themselves.  Maybe, I figured, working with the gardeners could get me closer to the animals than I'd otherwise be.  So I signed up on the green line.


I'm so glad that I did.


When we think of the zoo, we obviously think about the animals, and that's fair enough.  They're the stars.  Literally, the name of the place establishes that a zoo is a place for animals.  But if animals are the stars, my first horticulture mentor taught me early on, than the plants set the stage.  They are the scenery.  They provide browse for the animals to eat and shade and climbing structures.  They can turn an enclosure into a habitat.  And yes, as living things, they come with their own host of challenges, needs, pests, parasites, diseases.  As a know-it-all kid, I thought I already understood the zoo in and out.  By the end of that summer, I realized how little I still knew about one of the biggest aspects of the park - the green collection that forms the backdrop for the animals.


I want to share with you a little of what I learned that summer, of how the plants and horticulturalists - just as much as the animals and zookeepers - are what can make a zoo someplace special.