A tree-mendous first step has been completed to make way for a new café as part of Perth Zoo’s 20-year Master Plan. 
 

A Celtis australis has been successfully transplanted into prime new real estate at the Zoo’s front entrance. 

The Zoo’s expert horticulturalists, with the help of The Arbor Centre, safely removed the juvenile tree – root bulb and all – from the main lawn and craned it through the Zoo to its new home. 

Weighing in at around two tonnes, or roughly the equivalent of Memphis the Southern White Rhino, this operation was no mean feat. 

This successful transplant marks the first works completed as part of the Zoo’s 20-year Master Plan. 

With the café construction expected to break ground this year, works like this transplant will be undertaken to protect and enhance the Zoo’s iconic botanic estate – ensuring it continues to be an inner-city oasis. 

Did you know?...

  • Perth Zoo is home to many rare and endangered trees which can be seen nowhere else in WA; 
  • Perth Zoo was Perth’s very first botanical garden; 
  • Two Norfolk Pine trees (Araucaria heterphylla) in the Zoo’s Australian Bushwalk were planted in 1901 during a royal visit to Perth by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, later known as King George V and Queen Mary. During WW2, apparently the Union Jack flag was hung from the Norfolk Pines.
  • Perth Zoo’s first head gardener, Henry Steedman, worked to select and plant a collection of palm trees that can still be seen at the Zoo today. Among them a Chilean Wine Palm, planted in 1912. This tree is vulnerable in the wild due to being over logged for the sap inside, it’s a very rare plant to have in any botanical collection