Planting a new kind of zoo

PLANTS AND LANDSCAPE PLAY AN ESSENTIAL ROLE IN THE MODERN ZOO EXPERIENCE. SARAH THORNTON TALKS TO THE MAN WITH THE DREAM JOB AT AUCKLAND ZOO.

For the past 25 years, Hugo Baynes has been creating habitats for creatures great and small in his role as manager of horticulture at Auckland Zoo.

When Hugo first joined the Zoo, while starting to change, it still had many of the original old concrete aviaries and cages from when it had opened in 1922. However, over the past three decades these have all gone.

Under a succession of Zoo directors, significant capital investment and the engagement of specialist zoological landscape architects from the US to masterplan its redesign, Auckland Zoo has evolved into a leading wildlife and conservation science organisation with wonderful new habitats across the 16 hectare park. And it’s proving popular with the public. Since the 1990s, annual visitor numbers have risen from 300,000 to more than 700,000.

Hugo came to the role of horticulture manager with a landscape design background and extensive plant knowledge from his years working in a nursery and garden centre on the Kapiti Coast.

“At my interview, I was told there were major developments coming up and that horticulture would play a primary role, and I knew it would be the perfect job for me. I had also travelled extensively, so was familiar with the environments I would be working to create,” he says.

The Zoo’s directive to Hugo was to replicate the unique habitat that each animal originates from, creating ‘landscape rooms’ around the park. The Zoo also has a vision that horticulture must not only create an experience for the animals, but for the public as well.

“My role is aligned to the Zoo’s mission - to bring people together