Living sculptures
Zoo’s animal-shaped topiaries getting their share of notice
Watching animal antics is compelling enough to make zoos around the world favorite destinations for humans.
The Memphis Zoo is no exception with its roly-poly panda bears, stingrays you can pet, acrobatic siamangs, athletic otters and so many more.
Zoo visitors are also drawn to a group of animals that are so sedentary they move only twice a year — to a protected environment for the winter and back outdoors for spring and summer.
Despite their lack of exercise, they grow so fast that zoo employees take frequent steps to curtail it. It may sound cruel, but it doesn’t hurt them at all.
They are topiaries, living sculptures created with plants trained over wire shapes.
Elton, the zebra topiary near the children’s playground, is the favorite of zoo horticulturist Jill Mabry.
His coat is made of tiny dark green leaves of creeping fig striped with a bright lime sedum, Angelina. His head is topped with a jazzy juncus grass mane, and his sunglasses were dropped into some plants by a visitor and found by a gardener.
“He requires the most maintenance of our topiaries because his stripes want to grow together,” Mabry said.
Every two weeks or so, all of the topiaries are trimmed and groomed to maintain their shapes and color distinctions.
Once a day, they are watered from top to bottom with special care given to their extremities, which dry out most quickly.
Not far from Elton is Melvin, an Angelina-covered giraffe spotted with brown bean sedum.
Layla, a tot-size bunny, is so lovable that her paws are often bare of plants because of many touches by tiny hands.
Even though she is now behind protective roping, she’s hard to resist. I found myself patting her too before I learned of the problem with excess physical affection.
Low-growing sedums are ideal for topiaries because t hey are tough and require less water than many plants.
The t i ny heart-shaped leaves of the creeping fig may seem fragile, but the plant is a tenacious climber and clinger. Because it grows flat against the surface it climbs on, the form of the animal is maintained with less pruning.
The topiary forms have been on the zoo property for many years but were seldom noticed.
“The English ivy growing on them was so rampant you couldn’t see the shapes of the animals,” Mabry said.
In the winter of 2011, the gardening staff began renovating the topiaries by first peeling the ivy off them in Memphis Park Services’ greenhouses on the North Parkway side of Overton Park.
The time-consuming process involves filling the frames with sphagnum moss to give the plants a moist, nutritious medium to grow on. Then the easily rooted plant sprigs are placed all over the form.
Leonard, a l ion topiary that stands near Cat Country, is more friendly than ferocious. Golden sedum covers his body. His mane is a mass of purple heart (secretia) and weeping lantana with lavender flowers.
Pokey, a horse new to the menagerie, stands near the entrance to Stingray Bay. He’s enveloped in four different sedums, and his tail is adorned with the red flowers of the hummingbird-attracting fire-
GREEN THUMB
cracker plant.
Outside the Administration Building near the zoo entrance are large containers with animal topiaries as their focal points. Because they are smaller than those sited around the grounds, they need more frequent grooming to keep plant growth in check.
In a container across the plaza near the entrance to the gift shop is Phyllis, a stunning moss- and coleus- covered swan-like bird.
Credit for the introduction of this style of portable topiary is given to Walt Disney, who in 1962 used it as a way to integrate his popular cartoon characters into the landscape at Disneyland.
Much older is the topiary technique of “carving” geometric shapes, as well as those of animals and people, from large evergreen shrubs in the grand gardens of Europe. The exact time of its origins is unknown but is believed to be as early as 38 B.C. to A.D. 14.
In the Far East, the art of topiary is more focused on natural forms in the windblown look achieved in miniature bonsai trees as well as the “cloud” pruning done on boxwood hedges.
No one suggests the handful of animal plant sculptures at the Memphis Zoo are more popular or significant than the real stars, the 3,500 or so animals living there.
But they do seem to provide perfect places for the taking of snapshots and often evoke questions when visitors catch gardeners grooming and watering them.
When the new Zambezi River Hippo Camp opens in 2016, two huge topiaries — a hippopotamus and a crocodile — will be at its entrance.
They will, no doubt, illicit the same response horticulture foreman Connie Shepherd observes with the current collection:
“People always smile when they see them.”