The Two Gardens of Thought

The visitor - a wealthy suburnite, I deduced fairly early on - sauntered up to me as I was fixing a fence one summer morning.

"Getting a little behind on the mowing, aren't we?" he asked with a smirk, gesturing to the shaggy, unkempt greenery around us.

I thought for a moment, then answered honestly.  "No.  Not really."

He looked at me like I was an idiot (I get that look a lot at work) - "You mean it's supposed to look like... that?"

"Oh yeah," I replied.  "It takes a lot of work to keep it looking like that."  With that, I smiled and sauntered off, leaving him no doubt perplexed over what his Home Owner's Association would say if he tried leaving his lawn - which I imagined to be roughly the size of Central Park - looking like the zoo.

Early on in my horticultural apprenticeship, I discovered that there were two rival schools of thought for zoo horticulture, both of which had active partisans in our facility, which bore evidence of both of their works.

On one hand, there were those (deemed "old fashioned" by their opposition) who favored formal gardens, manicured lawns, neat flower arrangements, shrubberies, and maybe a little topiary here and there.  Statues and fountains dotted the landscape.  They emphasized the "Gardens" part of the name "Zoological Gardens" - the animal exhibits, in their eyes, were like jewels you would see in a store, set against an immaculate piece of velvet for the customer to more easily admire.  Their gardens, in this context, were the velvet.

The other school (deemed "lazy" by their rivals) went au natural.  The zoo was a place for animals, and they wanted it to look natural - they wanted the lines between exhibits and public spaces blurred.  Trees and shrubs were allowed to grow as they would, provided they did not interfere with the operations of the zoo or safety of staff, animals, or visitors.   Nothing was formal, no geometric shapes, no straight lines - things weren't random, but the chaos was carefully controlled to create the effect of wildness  In some ways, I thought this took more effort (at least mentally) than the formal approach.

I myself developed a fondness for the latter approach.  To me, wild landscaping helped set the zoo apart from every other park or garden in our city - it emphasized that we were in the homes of animals.  It helped foster a sense of adventure.  When I saw animals, it made it feel like I was stumbling across them, rather than passing another museum diorama.  It tended to use less resources (especially water) and require less weeding.  It also had the added advantage of doing a better job of attracting native wildlife to our grounds.

Plenty of zoos - especially those combined with botanical gardens, such as Jacksonville and Cincinnati - may have a blend of both approaches, and I suppose there's some value in variety.  Left to my own choices, however, I'd grow my entire zoo wild.