Description:
Edith Siemens talks about her career as a horticulturist at the Oklahoma City Zoo.
Transcript:
Interviewee: Edith Siemens
Interviewer: Amy Stephens
AS: Today is January 13th, 2010. This is Amy Stephens and I am interviewing Edith at the Oklahoma City Zoo, so Edith why don’t you start off by telling us your full name, your age, and your birthplace.
ES: Edith Siemens, um, I’m 57. I was born in Colorado. I married an Okie in Colorado and I winded up, we both winded up coming down here to uh, farm with Bill’s parents, my in laws, and winded up in Ada, Oklahoma, and uh, that wasn’t working so well, the farm. So we moved to Hugo and spent a couple of years down there in a children’s home, and then that wasn’t working really well, uh, working with juvenile delinquents is something else, and so we winded up moving to Oklahoma City, and Bill had some friends here that we stayed here with them for a while, and uh, got to know the city and uh, one of Bill’s friends had a friend that worked at the zoo. One of the first jobs I got was working at a nursery, plant nursery, and when a position opened up for part time work here at the zoo, this friend of a friend asked if I would be interested. Of course I came it was $2.50 an hour…..
AS: Wow.
ES: You don’t turn that down. I was making $1.50 at the nursery. So I took the job and uh, my job at the time was the amphitheatre, watering the amphitheatre. The amphitheatre had a huge gathering of, the concerts that they lined up were phenomenal, The Grateful Dead, to be honest I can’t remember how many artists were here because it was every weekend and uh, I had three faucets to hook up hundreds and hundreds of feet of hose to water the amphitheatre, is that unreal…
AS: Wow.
ES: But in between all of that I did get to help out at the zoo horticulture which at the time the staff consisted of 3 grounds crew, one of them being a supervisor, Thomas, uh, Mark Flemming was the curator, horticulture curator at that time, we had a supervisor, Lauren, and Pearl, she was one of the horticulture technicians, and Laura Manning was the supervisor. We had no plant budget so we would travel, drive along the roadsides looking for seeds…..
AS: Wow.
ES: And some of the plant, you know, the plant, wild flowers are just phenomenal, and at the time we had no plant budget, they were incorporating a lot of wild flowers, yuccas, succulents, grasses, native grasses and adding them into the landscape. So uh……
AS: So when you were watering the amphitheatre, you were just watering grass not plantings?
ES: I was just watering grass, the grass….
AS: Huh…
ES: It was huge. There would be, like I said, I would say that it was a pretty big thing having all of these concerts at the zoo, and uh, eventually there was irrigation added there, but uh, that is what I helped them do. Luckily I didn’t have to mow it.
AS: Goodness, yes, and what year was that, that you started?
ES: That was 1983.
AS: Ok.
ES: I was hired, I started part time and um, that was actually, I got full time in 1983, and uh, prior to that I was here a year and a half part time and that was in the 80’s…..
AS: Ok so you actually came here in the early 80’s…
ES: Uh huh, late in like July of 80.
AS: Ok.
ES: And uh, the horticulture department was growing, and I do mean growing, plant material, not people wise, but it was so, it was so much fun to learn from these two people, Pearl and Lauren, who loved horticulture and wildflowers was so, it was just so cool to be able to collect seed, grow seed in a tiny little light house that we had and then plant them out the following spring. That was just phenomenal to me. We didn’t really have gardens we had a lot of natural landscaping, wildness out there between all of these exhibits that were far and few in between. We did have a lot of green space and we did have a lot of trees and a lot of shrubs and a lot of naturalistic landscaping and we were just kind of focusing some of our flower beds at the entrance. We, when people walk in we had the green house, Will Rogers green house every now and then would give us a couple of flats of periwinkles and, you know, that was thrilling, that was just so cool, and we would just have these little spots of color as you walk in to the zoo.
AS: So what was the progression when you started becoming more formal in your gardening and getting exotics and that kind of thing?
ES: I think as the zoo started uh, possibly the directors always had different directions to go. We had a director that just liked to collect animals, no, he also collected, went to Arizona and collected a fabulous collection of succulents, the golden barrels…..
AS: Uh huh…..
ES: And a lot of different mamalaria species and that’s just how he used to collect stuff….
AS: And who was that?
ES: That was Curtis….
AS: Lawrence Curtis?
ES: Yeah, Lawrence Curtis. He was a, I didn’t really know him, I was just uh, you know, just one of those people in the background. He was but, he would come in and drop off these amazing plants that he was out in Arizona with another person and they had these things that they collected and that’s kind of how it started, started at that time because there was no plant budget so that kind of limits you on how you evolve, but as the zoo started growing and becoming more aware of all the different animal collections that they wanted grow, or growing at aiming at, uh, we started directing, simulating those environments that those animals came from. A lot of it native plants, you can’t go wrong with native plants. We didn’t have irrigation, it was nothing elaborate we just kind of knew what grew where because we collected along the roadside so……
AS: But you grow things here that we shouldn’t be able to grow, how do you do that?
ES: No that’s kind of where, how this evolved from just natives as there was just more of a plant budget and more interest as far as the trust possibly, or the zoo directors, they became more interested in what was happening, how we could incorporate more plants in an exhibit, so it kind of grew slowly as more exhibits were coming into play. Horticulture also played a role in designing and planting and putting plant material in those exhibits. Well you can’t just put plant material not knowing if it is toxic or poison, so research started becoming a role, zoo horticulture stared becoming more of a role in the big picture.
AS: So what was your role when the zoo started going through accreditation to become a botanical garden?
ES: We were very, we started knuckling down and counting trees and identifying trees, and uh, we started out with a grid and we had a lot of help from some other garden, like OSU in Stillwater, they kind of gave us a direction in how to go, uh, there is a zoo, an association of zoological horticulture started up and what this group of people did was educate other zoo horticulturists in plant material and designs for incorporating new exhibits or in existing exhibits, and that was studying, having a plant survey of plants that did well in exhibits and plants that you don’t want to use in exhibits and kind of directing us in simulation of exhibits. Were these animals African, simulating an African exhibit, simulating an Asian exhibit and because we can’t grow these things we would find plants that look like thorny plants, or elephant ears, tropicals, and as the budget allowed we would incorporate more tropicals into the landscape to make it look more like Asia, or look it more, make it look more like Africa.
AS: Ok, interesting.
ES: And so you, you, you, at that time Mark Flemming was instrumental in this association of zoological horticulture and he attended conferences and he would bring back this information and we just gobbled it up. It was really cool to know that other zoos, we were following the footsteps of what other zoos do to incorporate plant simulation in these exhibits. So it was a hard process, it took a long time to actually get where we are today, but we planted the seed, sort of, and all of these different areas, and you get a keeper that’s, who’s interested in incorporating, eliminating gravel and wants to try some grass, those are the types of ideas that really take off, and uh, it’s a lot of hard work and a lot of research and it’s uh, it’s uh, really rewarding and gratifying at the end, and when you see that, that’s what I think makes people more excited about incorporating more naturalistic landscaping into exhibits, and moving away from bars, cement, for the health of the animal, and that was the direction in that we all took baby steps in, and eventually that was the goal that we all wanted to have as the zoo keepers and or horticulture, because we were just a small little department and all we did was just water stuff, plant stuff…..
AS: That didn’t last long though……
ES: It didn’t last long because it, it was really popular. People really enjoyed coming out here and slowly seeing animals in a naturalistic setting was more pleasing and more inviting for everybody and it was also beneficial for the animals. So we did have a small role and then eventually as the zoo came more and more towards saving the species and incorporating the more naturalistic environments, we became more aggressive in helping out in that direction.
AS: So when the zoo builds new exhibits what is your role and how do you make sure that you are a part of that process?
ES: We are um, unfortunately when they have contractors out here or architects, they have their team. So we try to work with the contractors, the people that are hired to plant this material, now if you are working with people out of California, that kind of is uh, you know, the California architects and uh, plant people, they have California plants, so that’s where our role comes in and we try to offer them a list of plant material that is more suitable to our zones, so we will give them a list, they give us a list, and we give them a revised list, and we try to find, try to work with them in that way, regarding in how the plants that would work better in our, our zone, rather than California or the east coast, New York. Now it’s easier to work with people from New York than it is to work with people from California. They know the reality of cold weather and hot weather and all that, where California is all tropical….
AS: Right…
ES: So….
AS: So what is a typical day for you?
ES: We usually, we have the zoo pied out so that we have assigned areas and then we have a lot of the zoo that is grey areas, and we try to have assignment, assigned area days and then we try to have group area days where we try to tackle the grey areas, or when projects are so large that it takes the whole team to try to get that area under control. Arundo, cleaning up arundo, you know, Remington Drive, giant reed, all that grass that we grow everywhere, it has to be cut back every year, and that’s a chore because arundo grows, it takes off……
AS: The bamboo?
ES: Yeah, it takes off, so a lot of it is high maintenance, some of that is high maintenance and we try to work as a team to get all of that done, and we are always planning out the day, and it all depends on the season, and it depends on the weather, but there is always plenty to do, plenty to do.
AS: Do you find yourself interacting with guests since you are out in the gardens?
ES: Yes, yes um, you know that is one of our favorite, I have to speak for the whole horticulture department because everybody has their own style and their own taste in plant material. We have collections but, then because you are in an assigned area and you have some areas that you can incorporate your own little ideas and or style, we are allowed to do that, and um, having a guest tell you that those flowers are just magnificent, what are they, that is really rewarding, that makes it all worth it. You know, we make it look glamorous but it is a lot of work, it’s a lot of work.
AS: What are some of your areas?
ES: Well I try to make, help everybody in their areas, and when I first started the zoo one of my first projects was the rock garden because it was dry, and at the time I was really collecting rose rock along a creek out here that used to be a dump site for compost, it was over there at Remington, and that was, you talk about wildlife, there was actually more wildlife over there than there was at the zoo. I mean that they would dump the compost out there and um, there was a lot of plant material that we collected seeds from out there, but along the creek there was this magnificent rose rock bed and so I brought that over to incorporate it into a little rock garden collection and uh, at the time because that was my assigned area, I was given a budget, a small budget to select plants that would be suitable for our small rock garden collection. So we started out with these small little doable collections, an iris collection because the Iris Society donated irises for us and uh, the Rotary Club decided to help us with some money and we had a little bog garden collection. So these little collections started out slowly that we were incorporating into the big picture, the native landscaping and from there it just evolved……
AS: Huh.
ES: What’s cool is having all of these different people in our department implement these different styles and when they are allowed to do that you are going to have a really diverse garden, and we like that and so does our guests. It, it’s really cool when people uh, are allowed to, and get to interject these different ideas into gardening and horticulture.
AS: So you are a supervisor now, right?
ES: I am the supervisor.
AS: How has that changed your role here?
ES: Well um, I don’t do the physical work as much as I used to and I’m trying to keep us focused, because it would be really easy to roam around and enjoy looking at the gardens instead of actually taking care of the gardens and, and keeping us focused back into the collections because ideally we are trying to teach the visitors what grows here and what doesn’t do well and we also want to save money because we don’t have money to be throwing out there on fufu. You know what the reality is let’s grow what we can grow and if it’s pretty yea, but let’s be realistic about it to and um, know what we can do. So we do a lot of research, we have to do research in order to uh, to be successful.
AS: Do you have any mentors or zoo employees that have had a large effect on you over the years?
ES: You know, I do, my path, because I am outdoors I have got to interact with zoo employees, with volunteers, I have to tell you with that, the first two volunteers that we had, Bee Milligan and Judy Concanon, started out with us and they stayed with us for 9 years, and these two ladies were 10 years older than me, but you wouldn’t know it by once they went out to the zoo gardens. But anytime that we had volunteers that wanted to help us, we winded up learning so much more from them than the other way around, although they would say the reverse, but again having a diverse group of people brings this diversity into the zoo, into the gardens, and because they were 10 years older they were a lot wiser than me, and they taught me the value of politeness and just common sense interaction with everybody, coworkers, zoo guests, and we had, I had a lot of fun with those ladies, they taught me a lot, and a lot of volunteers that are older, they come in to help us. Eileen, who was an animal volunteer crossed over to help us in horticulture and she was such an inspiration, I can’t tell you how much I love and miss Eileen…..
AS: Hoskins?
ES: Uh huh. Uh, the very first conference that I went to, it was right after I had Peggy, and uh, you know, I was broke, and she was so excited, she heard that I was going to get to go to Chicago Botanical Garden and she said well now how are you set for money. I said money, I don’t have any money and she gave me 20 bucks and she said that this might buy you a t-shirt, might buy you a little postcard, and I said Eileen, you don’t know how far that’s going to go, but that’s the type of people that my path crossed, and those were mentors and those were people that I will never forget. A walker, Earl Brown, I’ve known for 9 years, he walked out here every day and I sat and talked to him every day about the vegetable garden, because I used to have Great Escape too, and the Brow’s Garden, and he was always curious about the growing techniques, are you using compost, what are you using out there, and that type of interaction, it was fun for me and it was educational and I made so many friends. Another docent, George Walters, he was a photographer. He was another person, he wanted to come out and take pictures of the flowers. It wasn’t so much animals, he was going to sneak in a picture of a flower here and there, and he loved the big hibiscus and he was always asking if he could pick a hibiscus flower for his wife, of course you can, of course…..
AS: He got special exception.
ES: Uh huh, he got special, exactly, and so those are the types of people, you know, they’re out there, guests, docents, coworkers, uh, you know, Pearl and Lauren, the very first people that I worked with, they were so enthusiastic about wildflowers. They are the ones who really helped me develop my love of wildflowers and naturalistic landscaping and I have always had a lot of respect for those two people too because they were, they were very patient with me, you know, and I didn’t have an education, a horticulture education, but when you have people that are willing to share this stuff with you and pass it on you have to do the same, you have to pass it on. They touch you in that way where you want to share what you have learned with people that are interested in horticulture and whatever it is, you have to share with them.
AS: Switching gears a little bit, do you have any favorite animal stories from around here?
ES: The dolphins. The dolphins were so cool because that was one of my areas…..
AS: Oh, huh.
ES: I have had areas everywhere because I was one of the first people, one of the first long term staff people, you know, I started out with all of these different collections, but when we got the dolphins, somebody had to plant those planters and I volunteered for it, of course, and it was so cool to interact with the dolphins, and at the time, the keepers were really ok with you petting the dolphins or feeding a dolphin or learning a couple of tricks to get, they always wanted your attention, they wanted to play ball. Now, you cannot say no to a dolphin, but that was one of the most fun things to do was to get to go in and take care of the plants….
AS: Right.
ES: We had a lot of volunteers for that one, yeah I want to go help over there, but that was one of my favorite animal experiences. I loved all of the birds, the parrots that we used to have in the Children’s Zoo in those big barrel cages. They would just chatter at you back and forth and scream or yell or whisper, that was always fun too, and didn’t we just lose one of them, at, Charlie….
AS: Oh, I don’t know. I hadn’t heard.
ES: It had been here forever…
AS: Awe.
ES: Yeah, and at the Children’s Zoo, and then he got moved to aquaticus, and you know sometimes that you can’t help it but to get attached to them, you can’t help it….
AS: Sure.
ES: I try not to but, you know, I’m not going to go up and pet a rhino, I know better, but you know what, it’s cool because a keeper would let me do that.
AS: So what are some of the things that you have been allowed to do because you worked out here?
ES: The interaction with the animals. Watching the birth of a giraffe, that was pretty cool. I got to hold a baby gorilla when they were at the nursery, the twins, oh, they look at you with those eyes and you think that you would like to have a baby gorilla…….
AS: Right.
ES: I want to take this one home, and that is so cool to get to have, get to hold a baby gorilla, or hold a baby kangaroo. Those are some really neat experiences. One of the things that I got to do a couple of years ago was bring Molly, my granddaughter, to walk flamingos when they were having to exercise them, that was so cool, she loved that, and when you get to do that because you are an employee, how am I ever going to pay the zoo back for that, I can’t. They will never know what they have done to allow me to do those kinds of things. That, you know, it’s awful that I get paid to do what I love. Isn’t that phenomenal?
AS: Yes.
ES: How many people get to do that?
AS: Yeah. How has your zoo career affected your family?
ES: It’s funny that um, I wanted my kids to follow in my path, you know, be interested in horticulture or in zoology, neither of them were, they love coming out, they loved the experience of being on the outside and watching it. My daughter loved the zoo when she was younger, but no she was not interested in being a junior curator, neither was my son. Now when he was older he did get to help because he is in art, he did get to help the graphics department with the Halloween props and they gave him free reign, and what’s cool Amy is that he still has his stuff out here that he did. Calvin and Hobbes…..
AS: Yes.
ES: He was a big Calvin and Hobbes fan, and they got Jim Flores, who was a curator at that time, go for it kid, you want to make a Calvin and Hobbes exhibit or a prop, do it, and he got to do that, he got to do masks, and that kind of thing he was really inspired. What’s cool is that now he is bringing his son out here, and his son loves it, so it may have skipped a generation because I am thinking that my grandkids just love this place, so it’s cool, I think that even though it skipped a little bit, we are still passing it on, and the zoo is even better now than it was when I was here, because through their eyes they are seeing some pretty neat stuff.
AS: What are some of your favorite stories to tell about working here at the zoo?
ES: Amy I have had so many stories, I wish that I had a digital camera when I first started because that would just trigger a lot of memories, but some of the harrowing things that happened to the staff and myself, we were cleaning out an area that hadn’t been touched at aquaticus. It was right after the opening and we had decided that we needed to clean up this area and we were rolling up all this dead plant material and I rolled right over a ground nest of bees…..
AS: Uh oh.
ES: And I am so afraid of bees, I mean, elephants no, rhinos no, bees yes, and but the thing to do is to not get all excited, be calm, be cool, and so everybody around me, the zoo staff, the horticulture saw these bees bombing me, and I was trying not to scream, I was screaming inside, but they were like fluttering and screaming, and I’m just saying be cool be cool don’t excite them, and I couldn’t run, I was literally frozen there. Needless to say I got, I winded up with 8 stings on my head, they winded up with like 7 or 8, luckily I didn’t go into anaphylactic shock because I am allergic to these things. They took me to the hospital and I got real, and they told me that I was crazy for coming back to the zoo, like you should not be working at the zoo, or in horticulture, but here I am and I have not been stung since.
AS: Huh.
ES: Just thinking about it scares me, but uh, it happens, there’s quite a few employees, it turns out have reactions to bees and they are kind of afraid of bees, but you know, I say be good and don’t worry about it, walk away….
AS: Wow, you’re tough…..
ES: Yeah, yeah, and then another time in an exhibit it was, we were at um, the new gator building over at Oklahoma Trails and we were planting pine trees in the red wolf exhibit and they were also planting trees on that uh, Black Mesa mound, and one of the staff, I was in the exhibit and one of the staff was on the other side and they asked me about where they should place this tree, so I walked over to the fence and I was pointing to a spot and I did not know that the hot wire was on……
AS: Oh no.
ES: And I touched the hot wire and it zapped me across, well it knocked me down a couple of feet, and uh, because it was a new exhibit, the room that the hot wire was turned on at was locked and it did not have any zoo keys in it…..
AS: Huh.
ES: So it was Tallboy that got nailed. Luckily I had my boots and I had gloves but it was just one of those things, they had the voltage kicked up too high…..
AS: Huh.
ES: And it was like oh my gosh. It scared a lot of us, it scared a lot of us because I had turned bright red and my heart was palpitating and luckily they got the ambulance and I was taken to emergency, and they did not, they thought what, she got nailed by a hot wire in a wolf exhibit, now come on…….
AS: That’s a unique story.
ES: They were wondering what world I was living in, but anyways yeah, luckily nothing else has happened to me.
AS: Hazardous place to work, huh?
ES: It is, you know, it is, we have to be careful and be aware of danger and you know, it’s not just the animals.
AS: So when you are working in a yard where there are dangerous animals, what’s the process that you go through to stay safe?
ES: Well after that there was a new protocol making sure that the hot wire was turned off because we have worked in exhibits where the hot wire wasn’t turned off although we weren’t near the hot wire, but because it arched, there are precautions that we all have to be aware of, but hot wire is one of them. We always have to make sure that it’s off, uh, making sure that an exhibit is empty before you go in it…..
AS: Right.
ES: Um, because of some of the past experiences, yeah we make triple, we are very cautious, and make sure that everyone is aware that we are in there, whether it is cutting down trees or removing plants away from fences. We make sure that we are all aware of what’s going on around us, the environment, keepers, horticulturists, grounds crew, security, everybody. So if we can just get those things taken care of then nothing will happen and we will have a successful planting.
AS: Yes. Well we have about 5 more minutes, so I wanted to ask you a few more questions then, you can add anything that you want too. What is your earliest zoo memory even back when you were a child?
ES: The first time that I came to this zoo was in 1973 and I was pregnant with my first child and we were just passing through and a friend wanted us to hang out at the zoo for awhile. We came in through that old entrance and it was the monkey ship right there as you walk in and I just thought that was so cute, that was so neat, and I really like the zoo because it was really a lot of, it was country. You know I was from Colorado and we had traveled through the panhandle and it was all flat and there was nothing out there. When we came to the zoo it was so, it was like a jungle. At that time it really was, there was a lot of plant material, a lot of trees, a lot of untouched woodland area, and there was a lot of walking when you are 6 months pregnant, I thought oh, there were no trams, well the tram was parked. But uh, the monkey ship at the front and like I said I don’t remember about Carmichael, I’m sure he was out there……
AS: The polar bear.
ES: But there was also monkey island, and that was Gibbon Island I think…
AS: Uh huh.
ES: And that was pretty cool.
AS: That was in the lake.
ES: Yeah, it was in the lake, and then there was the boat, even though we never took a boat ride, but it was parked there and I thought that it was pretty cool…..
AS: The steamboat?
ES: Yeah, the steamboat, the Virginia……
AS: The Virginia Lynn.
ES: Was it the Virginia Lynn?
AS: Yeah.
ES: Yeah, yeah, and uh, all of the birds because there was a lot of peacocks everywhere. There was a lot of just, to me there was more wildlife outside than inside and I thought that was pretty cool. I really liked the zoo, I thought it was really neat, and I can remember that.
AS: Did your career turn out the way that you expected?
ES: It turned out way better than I expected. It has been the most phenomenal job to have. I have enjoyed every minute of this career. I’m one of the lucky ones, in fact I think that a lot of people who were here feel that way, at least I hope that they do.
AS: How do you want to be remembered?
ES: Hopefully as best as I can be. I always try to project a positive image because that’s how I feel. I feel really positive out here and I want everybody to have a good experience when they come to the zoo, and if there is anything that I can do I hope that they are comfortable to ask.
AS: Is there anything that we didn’t get a chance to talk about? You may want to look over your list.
ES: I think that we covered it. I think the biggest, the biggest change is all of the accreditation process and the way that the zoo is training in species survival. That’s so important, I’m so glad we are turning towards conservation. I think that the educational department in phenomenal and that they are, have a lot of kids through here. I think that our young kids love this place and I think that everyone who plays a role in helping them understand what’s happening in our environment. There’s nothing negative about that.
AS: And you work with endangered plants here too……
ES: Yes we do, yes we do….
AS: That probably needs to be said.
ES: And I wish we could focus more on that and educate people more on that, but I think that our time will come once we get caught up with all of these new exhibits.
AS: Right. Alright, anything else Edith?
ES: Nothing that I can think of Amy. I hope that this was somewhat helpful and that of a different perspective and different view point of what the zoo is like.
AS: Yes. Thank you very much.
ES: You are welcome very much.