The Philly Zoo unveils giant topiary animal sculptures made from plants (2025)

The five “ZOOtopiaries” drive home the connections between plants and animals.

By
• Peter Crimmins
Updated Apr. 16, 2025 5:05 pm

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The Philadelphia Zoo has sprouted five massive plant displays of giant animals and insects.

At the entrance is a huge butterfly sculpture with outspread wings embedded with 3,200 tiny plants. Visitors can hunt down topiary giraffes rising 21 feet, a peacock, a school of fish and a giant snail the size of a compact car.

The Zoo also has their real animal counterparts on display, except for the snail.

“While you can’t go to the Philadelphia Zoo and visit a snail exhibit, you can absolutely find a snail,” said Dani Hogan, manager of mission integration. “We have plenty of wild snails. If you get down under the ground and look hard enough, you’ll find a snail.”

The five displays of “ZOOtopiaries: Nature’s Sculptures” were designed by the Quebec-based company Santoline. They are not topiary, per se, which are typically shaped from a single shrub, a la Edward Scissorhands.

These are mosaiculture, or sculptures embedded with thousands of small plants, typically ground cover such as alternanthera, also known as joyweed.

The plant sculptures are temporary, on view through October. The Zoo brought them in to drive home the connection between animals and plants.

Horticulture has always been part of America’s oldest zoo since it was founded in 1874. It’s right there in the name, as the gateway arch greeting visitors proclaims in iron, the Philly Zoo is the “Garden of the Zoological Society.”

Over the years, however, horticulture has often taken a back seat to zoology. But that might be changing.

Tim Duham, manager of horticulture, said there are several pending projects that will bring plants front-and-center at the zoo, including a flower garden at the entrance, plantings around the new flamingo walk-through exhibit now under construction and a partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

“Back in the ‘90s, early 2000s, there was much more push for horticulture in this place. We’re kind of getting back to that,” Dunham said. “These sculptures represent a really nice blend between horticulture and the animal collection here at the Zoo.”