Working in the nursery...

Nursery from elevation

There are many things happening in the P&G at any one time. The department’s planting objectives are to beautify the landscape view around the zoo, to improve the microclimate and macroclimate of the landscape, to reduce noise with vegetation, to provide a source of animal food, and to promote and preserve the rare fruit trees, as result much of the work revolves around the nursery.

When I went out to the nursery for the first time on Tuesday, I was introduced to the two women who take care of everything within the 2-3 acres of plants. Starting that morning, I began assisting with the maintenance and propagation of the plants under the guidance of these two women. Unfortunately, they don’t speak any English. So from this point out, if I refer to being instructed by one of the nursery women to do something, you can be assured that what  that really means is me participating in a very modified version of charades where I am demonstrated physically how to do something with some Malay interjections along the way that I do not understand. Luckily, I am pretty good at context clues and reading what people could be saying based on body language. All thanks given to the people I interacted with through the years who did not share a common language with me.

Heliconia plants after trimming

 After participating in this demonstrative dance and being left to the tasks at hand, you can easily see how about five minutes into working, I start to be slightly concerned I am doing something wrong.  A prime example was when I was taken to where a variety of large Heliconia plants were, and I was shown to remove dead/dying/discolored/damaged leaves to the base of the plants. Soon after beginning this, I came to a plant that only had discolored leaves.  An inner quarrel soon followed starting with self-doubt, “Should I cut them off? What if that kills the plant? Maybe I misunderstood how discolored the leaves needed to be to warrant cutting them off? What if I have been doing this wrong the entire time?!” Then followed by self-assurance, “I totally have been doing this right.This is what she showed me to do. Since all the other leaves were discolored to the same degree, at least I would have some consistency in my non-prejudiced clipping. It should be fine; the nursery ladies just cut all the branches off those other plants this morning.” This is the most extreme example of concern.  Others doubts were brought on by more trivial issues like “Maybe I didn't need to weed this neighboring section…” but in all cases my doubts were removed or ebbed when the inspection of how I was getting along was met with a thumbs up and a couple of head nods. I would like to reassure you that in the specific example above, any concerns I still had were gone when we began dividing some of the same species of Heliconia, in the afternoon, and one of the nursery ladies brought out a machete and chopped off the tops of the plants. Whew!

Heliconia after being re-potted

Despite the lack of verbal communication between these two women and myself, I rather like them, and it does appear that they like me. They act very much like aunties, constantly motioning at me to take a break with them, motioning for me to sit down, offering me sweets and tiny bananas with a motion of eating with your hands followed with a “Makan, Makan!” a commonly used Malay phrase, meaning “Eat, Eat!”. And we frequently are laughing together about something. Often this is because of us realizing neither of us understands what the other person is saying, but also from just working together. We laughed when we were pruning, and I stepped down and gingerly lifted my boot, following a large crunching sound, to find a now splattered giant snail. And we laughed when I walked over and grabbed a bushel of clippings, to help out, followed by frantic motioning to put them down upon the realization that they were covered in thorns. No harm, no foul.  My favorite time though, was when they offered me some tiny bananas that I could not for the life of me peel the tops off of, and they turned to look at me just as I ripped the top off with my teeth. I sheepishly smiled in response before we all three burst into laughter.

Taking a break

These women also are in charge of some very important tasks for P&G, and we have done a lot of work  in the last couple of days. There is this constant activity of fertilizing, trimming, pruning, weeding and separating plants throughout the nursery due to the abundance and variety of plants. Every morning a lorry brings all the herbivore feces to the compost pile. This compost is then shoveled by the women into wheelbarrows and brought down to be mixed into the terra cotta colored dirt before it is used in potting plants in the afternoon. Thus far, most of this potting activity has been the result of propagating by dividing plants or by cuttings, but we also re-potted some plants that had been removed from an area of the zoo that is receiving a new layer of top soil. Like Eza told me when we took the initial tour of the grounds, nothing is wasted. So whenever new landscaping,  or some much needed aesthetic treatment takes place, the plants are dug up carefully and dropped off at the nursery to be divided, cleaned up and repotted.  As result, all the plants in Zoo Negara come through the nursery at some point.

Putting down new topsoil

And so it begins...

Entrance to nursery

Before getting to my internship, I was not exactly sure as to what to expect I would be doing on a daily basis. Suffice it to say I was excited to get to work at a zoo! Who wouldn't be? The frequent banter from my friends and family about me being a gratified pooper-scooper did begin to concern me slightly. That would stink, literally. Thankfully not true, well not exactly; the handlers for the herbivores around the zoo do collect all the feces, and it is then taken to the nursery and added to the compost which is then used in a 3:1 soil mixture that all the plants are potted into. So I have, per say, shoveled some of it but only when assisting with some propagation of a Heliconia variety.

'Fire Flame' Heliconia

So far I have really enjoyed getting to work on the Zoo grounds. I’m frequently working in the nursery, secluded in the very back of the zoo. It is a very pleasant place to be, and due to the shade feels like picnic weather all the time despite the weather in Malaysia being a constant of 90F or higher in the middle of the day and at least 60% humidity.

There really hasn't been a dull moment.

On the first day I was toured around the offices in the back by the head of the Education Department as he took me to the Parks and Garden Department (P&G).  We headed to the very back of the buildings, passing an impressive veterinary clinic and animal quarantine area. Then walking by a very large cage labeled "Predator Holding" which I found quite amusing to contain domestic cats (strays found on the property), before heading back into what looked like an industrial garage. We entered the P&G office, and I met the three staff members. Mohammed is the head of the department and has been working there for 20 years! His extent of English is not very much, but he says good morning to me every day, and I politely respond likewise in Malay with a “Selamat Pagi.” We had an agreement that if I would use as much Malay that I know, he would do the same with English. Eza is the second in charge of the department and is directly supervising me. She has been working at the zoo for three years almost directly out of finishing her degrees. Whenever she is not in meetings, I ask her questions about anything I have seen and wondered about. When I follow her on her rounds around the zoo, she will point something out and ask for ideas or my opinion, which has resulted in me being assigned to design the planting around the water feature in the new bamboo exhibit! Ain is the last member of the staff and has only been there for three months. I think she mainly supervises the contractors work throughout the day when Eza is in meetings. I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to her much. The one afternoon where I had the time, I wanted to ask her about the snails in the nursery and if they were a very large problem because they seemed to be everywhere. The conversation more or less consisted of me asking her if she knew what a snail was and then trying to explain what a snail was, first verbally and then drawing one out. I was unsuccessful, and we both shared in a laugh about it. It would be notable that the only time I feel awkward when being in the office is when all four of us are there standing in this 10’x10’ room, and I feel ridiculously tall because they all only reach to my shoulder and I’m only 5’8’’!

After introductions, Eza and Ain took me on a tour around the Zoo so that I could become familiar with the areas so that if they told me “after lunch go over to where the giraffes are,” then I could know what they were talking about. The tour was pretty straight forward, and I really enjoyed looking at the nature in the different exhibits. Eza explained as we went along how it was their aim not only to beautify the park but also to try to make it really feel like the wild. Outside the chimpanzee exhibit she was saying how P&G doesn’t waste much; for example, if they need to cut a tree down, then they will ask the zoology department if they have a need for it in any of the animal exhibits. It seemed a fitting example as the chimpanzees ran to the end of the elevated log closest to us and begin zealously jumping up and down, while shaking a stick! Eza and Ain began to walk away from the barrier, which is about my height, and motioned for me to follow just as the chimp flung the stick at us, striking the top of the barrier! I could tell then that this internship was going to be interesting right then and there.

Tigers

The rest of the day, I spent reading the Standard Operating Procedures and a book from which they select almost all of the flora for the park, while I was being encouraged to take plenty of time to walk around the zoo and to go watch the animal show in the afternoon. I have to say that being in a Zoo when no one else is there is actually quite nice and the animals act completely different without an audience. The lion growled at the tigers through the fence, which was met by the tigers peering around a tree with a kind of “what is his problem” attitude before lying down for a nap. A white female tiger, which had recently had babies, was pacing in front of the water barrier, and throughout the day, the primates, which are located nearest to the office, would burst into a cacophony of sound. During lunch I took the time to go watch them. A new lemur family had been added to the lemur exhibit, and they would burst into a uproar, which would start the siamang next to them to start hollering, followed by the gibbons next to him and finally resulting in the entire population of the macaque monkeys running over to the corner of their exhibit cage to watch them intently!

It was a really fun first day to say the least!

Macaque Monkeys

Welcome to my Horticulture Internship Blog!

My name is Azita Amini, member of the Fighting Texas Aggie Class of 2015, and welcome to my blog where I will be sharing the  aspects of horticulture as it relates to creating and maintaining the grounds of a zoo.

Tomorrow I start my first day at Zoo Negara, the National Zoo of Malaysia, in the city of Kuala Lumpur, the 10th largest city in South East Asia. Malaysia is a country with its southernmost tip in the tropics, which means the average daily temperature is between 70 and 90 F, 365 days of the year. Afternoon showers are the norm, and the plant life shows its appreciation with tropical beauty and enormous growth. It is a perfect place to observe tropical horticulture from Malaysia's beautiful coast line to interior mountain ranges.

How did I get started? Zoo Negara offers an Industrial Training Program to university students and accepts students from most career paths to train in its working society.  After a little research, I applied for the program and was notified of my acceptance in late December.

What can I expect? Zoo Negara spans 110 acres of land that is only 5 KM from the city center. It leads zoo industry standards in South East Asia by example with over 90% of it animals kept in naturally landscaped exhibits. Learning about these natural habitats and how to maintain them will be my primary goal during this internship.

Follow me during my eight week internship to see how a zoo is grown.

If you didn't look at them above, here are the hyperlinks to the Zoo Negara Website, a tourism video for Malaysia (with the classic Malaysian tourism song), and a video slideshow of Kuala Lumpur.