Oregon Public Broadcasting

A new garden at the Oregon Zoo promises to not only be a feast for the eyes of patrons, but a feast for some of the zoo's occupants.

Nilda, a prehensile-tailed porcupine from the Oregon Zoo’s educational outreach programs, will attend the Oct. 25 planting to sample the first of the browse garden’s offerings. Photo by Michael Durham, courtesy of the Oregon Zoo.

On Oct. 25, volunteers will plant Indian plum, western teaberry and other pleasing-to-the-eye plants in the Metro Regional Center's new browse garden, a collaborative project between the MRC and Oregon Zoo. Each species in the garden will also please the palates of zoo animals, who will get to enjoy clippings from the garden as part of the zoo's browse program, zoo officials say.

"Browse" refers to plants that help enrich the lives of zoo animals. In the wild, animals constantly interact with plants for nourishment and entertainment, and browse provides the zoo's residents with similarly engaging experiences.

"The MRC browse garden is a team effort that demonstrates Metro's commitment to our animals' welfare,"said zoo director Kim Smith. "MRC and zoo staff collaborated to plan it, and staff volunteers from across the Metro agency are joining us to fertilize and plant the beds."

Oregon Zoo facilities operations manager Chris Massey came up with the idea for the garden as he walked through the MRC plaza after attending a meeting.

An Oregon Zoo giraffe enjoys Arctic blue willow, one of the many enriching plants provided to animals as part of the zoo’s browse program. Photo by Michael Durham, courtesy of the Oregon Zoo.

"I realized the plaza's planters could house a browse garden that would benefit zoo animals and serve as a compelling example of sustainability," Massey said. "Not only are the garden plants all native species, but by using their trimmings and clippings as browse, we also prevent waste."

Interpretive materials in the garden will identify plants by their common and scientific names, and tell which Oregon Zoo animals will enjoy them as browse. Colobus monkeys will munch on the leaves and berries of salal; rhinos will peel the tough outer bark of vine maple to get at the soft wood underneath; chimps will eat the flowers and new leaves of Indian plum as well as use the plant's twigs as tools. The garden will also yield browse for the zoo's Speke's gazelles, orangutans, giraffes, black bears and fruit bats, officials say.